P.falciparum var gene diversity and malaria control

Grant number: 7R01AI084156-05 | Funding period: 2014 - 2016

Completed

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The burden of Plasmodium falciparum malaria is enormous with up to a million deaths per annum and billions of infections that persist for many months in the human population. These chronic infections, largely asymptomatic, constitute the reservoir of infection and serve to fuel continued malaria transmission. Traditionally, the reservoir of infection has been measured in population surveys by microscopic visualization of the parasite in blood smears. This method, however, is not sensitive and does not capture within species variation to accurately assess the true reservoir of P. falciparum where individuals in malaria endemic areas carry multiple distinct..

View full description

Related publications (14)

Scholarly works icon

Molecular epidemiology of continued Plasmodium falciparum disease transmission after an outbreak in Ecuador

Shazia Ruybal-Pesántez, Fabián E Sáenz, Samantha L Deed, Erik K Johnson, Daniel B Larremore, Claudia A Vera-Arias, Kathryn E Tiedje, Karen P Day

2023-03-17

<jats:p>To better understand the factors underlying the continued incidence of clinical episodes of falciparum malaria in E-2025 c..

Scholarly works icon

Age-specific patterns of DBLα var diversity can explain why residents of high malaria transmission areas remain susceptible to Plasmodium falciparum blood stage infection throughout life.

Shazia Ruybal-Pesántez, Kathryn E Tiedje, Shai Pilosof, Gerry Tonkin-Hill, Qixin He, Thomas S Rask, Lucas Amenga-Etego, Abraham R Oduro, Kwadwo A Koram, Mercedes Pascual, Karen P Day

2022-10-01

Immunity to Plasmodium falciparum is non-sterilising, thus individuals residing in malaria-endemic areas are at risk of infection ..

Scholarly works icon

Indoor residual spraying with a non-pyrethroid insecticide reduces the reservoir of Plasmodium falciparum in a high-transmission area in northern Ghana.

Kathryn E Tiedje, Abraham R Oduro, Oscar Bangre, Lucas Amenga-Etego, Samuel K Dadzie, Maxwell A Appawu, Kwadwo Frempong, Victor Asoala, Shazia Ruybal-Pésantez, Charles A Narh, Samantha L Deed, Dionne C Argyropoulos, Anita Ghansah, Samuel A Agyei, Sylvester Segbaya, Kwame Desewu, Ignatius Williams, Julie A Simpson, Keziah Malm, Mercedes Pascual

2022-01-01

High-malaria burden countries in sub-Saharan Africa are shifting from malaria control towards elimination. Hence, there is need to..

Scholarly works icon

Evolutionary analyses of the major variant surface antigen-encoding genes reveal population structure of Plasmodium falciparum within and between continents

Gerry Tonkin-Hill, Shazia Ruybal-Pesantez, Kathryn E Tiedje, Virginie Rougeron, Michael F Duffy, Sedigheh Zakeri, Tepanata Pumpaibool, Pongchai Harnyuttanakorn, OraLee H Branch, Lastenia Ruiz-Mesia, Thomas S Rask, Franck Prugnolle, Anthony T Papenfuss, Yao-ban Chan, Karen P Day

2021-02-01

Malaria remains a major public health problem in many countries. Unlike influenza and HIV, where diversity in immunodominant surfa..

Scholarly works icon

Identifying functional groups among the diverse, recombining antigenic var genes of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum from a local community in Ghana

Mary M Rorick, Edward B Baskerville, Thomas S Rask, Karen P Day, Mercedes Pascual

2018-06-01

A challenge in studying diverse multi-copy gene families is deciphering distinct functional types within immense sequence variatio..

Scholarly works icon

Signatures of competition and strain structure within the major blood-stage antigen of Plasmodium falciparum in a local community in Ghana

Mary M Rorick, Yael Artzy-Randrup, Shazia Ruybal-Pesantez, Kathryn E Tiedje, Thomas S Rask, Abraham Oduro, Anita Ghansah, Kwadwo Koram, Karen P Day, Mercedes Pascual

2018-04-01

The concept of niche partitioning has received considerable theoretical attention at the interface of ecology and evolution of inf..

Scholarly works icon

A high parasite density environment induces transcriptional changes and cell death in Plasmodium falciparum blood stages

Evelyn S Chou, Sabia Z Abidi, Marian Teye, Aleksandra Leliwa-Sytek, Thomas S Rask, Simon A Cobbold, Gerry Q Tonkin-Hill, Krishanthi S Subramaniam, Anna E Sexton, Darren J Creek, Johanna P Daily, Michael F Duffy, Karen P Day

2018-03-01

UNLABELLED: Transient regulation of Plasmodium numbers below the density that induces fever has been observed in chronic malaria i..

Scholarly works icon

Evolutionary structure of Plasmodium falciparum major variant surface antigen genes in South America: Implications for epidemic transmission and surveillance

Virginie Rougeron, Kathryn E Tiedje, Donald S Chen, Thomas S Rask, Dionicia Gamboa, Amanda Maestre, Lise Musset, Eric Legrand, Oscar Noya, Erhan Yalcindag, Francois Renaud, Franck Prugnolle, Karen P Day

2017-11-01

Strong founder effects resulting from human migration out of Africa have led to geographic variation in single nucleotide polymorp..

Scholarly works icon

Population genomics of virulence genes of Plasmodium falciparum in clinical isolates from Uganda

Shazia Ruybal-Pesantez, Kathryn E Tiedje, Gerry Tonkin-Hill, Thomas S Rask, Moses R Kamya, Bryan Greenhouse, Grant Dorsey, Michael F Duffy, Karen P Day

2017-09-18

Plasmodium falciparum causes a spectrum of malarial disease from asymptomatic to uncomplicated through to severe. Investigations o..

Scholarly works icon

Evidence of strain structure in Plasmodium falciparum var gene repertoires in children from Gabon, West Africa

Karen P Day, Yael Artzy-Randrup, Kathryn E Tiedje, Virginie Rougeron, Donald S Chen, Thomas S Rask, Mary M Rorick, Florence Migot-Nabias, Philippe Deloron, Adrian JF Luty, Mercedes Pascual

2017-05-16

Existing theory on competition for hosts between pathogen strains has proposed that immune selection can lead to the maintenance o..

Scholarly works icon

Using expected sequence features to improve basecalling accuracy of amplicon pyrosequencing data

Thomas S Rask, Bent Petersen, Donald S Chen, Karen P Day, Anders Gorm Pedersen

2016-04-22

BACKGROUND: Amplicon pyrosequencing targets a known genetic region and thus inherently produces reads highly anticipated to have c..

Scholarly works icon

Epistatic Interactions between Apolipoprotein E and Hemoglobin S Genes in Regulation of Malaria Parasitemia

V Rougeron, CM Woods, KE Tiedje, F Bodeau-Livinec, F Migot-Nabias, P Deloron, AJF Luty, FJI Fowkes, KP Day

2013-10-08

Apolipoprotein E is a monomeric protein secreted by the liver and responsible for the transport of plasma cholesterol and triglyce..

Scholarly works icon

Hypervariable antigen genes in malaria have ancient roots

Martine M Zilversmit, Ella K Chase, Donald S Chen, Philip Awadalla, Karen P Day, Gil McVean

2013-05-31

BACKGROUND: The var genes of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum are highly polymorphic loci coding for the erythrocy..

Scholarly works icon

A Molecular Epidemiological Study of var Gene Diversity to Characterize the Reservoir of Plasmodium falciparum in Humans in Africa

Donald S Chen, Alyssa E Barry, Aleksandra Leliwa-Sytek, Terry-Ann Smith, Ingrid Peterson, Stuart M Brown, Florence Migot-Nabias, Philippe Deloron, Moses M Kortok, Kevin Marsh, Johanna P Daily, Daouda Ndiaye, Ousmane Sarr, Souleymane Mboup, Karen P Day

2011-02-09

BACKGROUND: The reservoir of Plasmodium infection in humans has traditionally been defined by blood slide positivity. This study w..

University of Melbourne Researchers