Journal article
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
S Ruybal-Pesántez, KE Tiedje, S Pilosof, G Tonkin-Hill, Q He, TS Rask, L Amenga-Etego, AR Oduro, KA Koram, M Pascual, KP Day
International Journal for Parasitology | Published : 2022
Abstract
Immunity to Plasmodium falciparum is non-sterilising, thus individuals residing in malaria-endemic areas are at risk of infection throughout their lifetime. Here we seek to find a genomic epidemiological explanation for why residents of all ages harbour blood stage infections despite lifelong exposure to P. falciparum in areas of high transmission. We do this by exploring, for the first known time, the age-specific patterns of diversity of variant antigen encoding (var) genes in the reservoir of infection. Microscopic and submicroscopic P. falciparum infections were analysed at the end of the wet and dry seasons in 2012–2013 for a cohort of 1541 residents aged from 1 to 91 years in an area c..
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Grants
Awarded by National Institutes of Health
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the participants, communities, and the Ghana Health Service in Bongo District, Ghana, for their willingness to participate in this study. We also thank the personnel at the Navrongo Health Research Centre, Ghana, for sample collection and parasitological assessment/expertise. We thank Michael F. Duffy for his valuable input and discussions on an earlier version of the manuscript. We appreciate the support of the sequencing facilities at New York University Genome Technology Center, USA, and Australian Genome Research Facility, as well as the University of Melbourne/Bio21 Institute (Australia), University of Chicago (USA), and Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (Australia) for computational resources. This research was supported by the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health (USA) [Program on the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID), Grant number: R01-TW009670 to K.A.K., M.P. and K.P.D.] and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health [Grant number: R01-AI084156 to K.P.D.]. S.R-P. was supported by a Melbourne International Engagement Award from the University of Melbourne. S.P. was supported by a James S. McDonnell, Foundation, United States 21st Century Science Initiative (USA) -Postdoctoral Program in Complexity Science Complex Systems Fellowship Award and by a Fulbright Fellowship from the U.S. Department of State.