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Asymptomatic Plasmodium vivax malaria in the Brazilian Amazon: Submicroscopic parasitemic blood infects Nyssorhynchus darlingi

Almeida, Gregório Guilherme
Costa, Pedro Augusto Carvalho
Araujo, Maísa da Silva
Gomes, Gabriela Ribeiro
Carvalho, Alex Fiorini
Figueiredo, Maria Marta
Pereira, Dhelio Batista
Tada, Mauro Shugiro
Medeiros, Jansen Fernandes
Soares, Irene da Silva
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Abstract

Individuals with asymptomatic infection due to Plasmodium vivax are posited to be important reservoirs of malaria transmission in endemic regions. Here we studied a cohort of P. vivax malaria patients in a suburban area in the Brazilian Amazon. Overall 1,120 individuals were screened for P. vivax infection and 108 (9.6%) had parasitemia detected by qPCR but not by microscopy. Asymptomatic individuals had higher levels of antibodies against P. vivax and similar hematological and biochemical parameters compared to uninfected controls. Blood from asymptomatic individuals with very low parasitemia transmitted P. vivax to the main local vector, Nyssorhynchus darlingi. Lower mosquito infectivity rates were observed when blood from asymptomatic individuals was used in the membrane feeding assay. While blood from symptomatic patients infected 43.4% (199/458) of the mosquitoes, blood from asymptomatic infected 2.5% (43/1,719). However, several asymptomatic individuals maintained parasitemia for several weeks indicating their potential role as an infectious reservoir. These results suggest that asymptomatic individuals are an important source of malaria parasites and Science and Technology for Vaccines granted by Conselho Nacional de may contribute to the transmission of P. vivax in low-endemicity areas of malaria.

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Almeida GG, Costa PAC, Araujo MDS, Gomes GR, Carvalho AF, Figueiredo MM, Pereira DB, Tada MS, Medeiros JF, Soares IDS, Carvalho LH, Kano FS, Castro MC, Vinetz JM, Golenbock DT, Antonelli LRDV, Gazzinelli RT. Asymptomatic Plasmodium vivax malaria in the Brazilian Amazon: Submicroscopic parasitemic blood infects Nyssorhynchus darlingi. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2021 Oct 29;15(10):e0009077. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0009077. PMID: 34714821; PMCID: PMC8555776.

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10.1371/journal.pntd.0009077
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34714821
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Copyright: © 2021 Almeida et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Attribution 4.0 International