Co-infection of human immunodeficiency virus and malaria is not uncommon in people living in sub-Saharan Africa. Since HIV infection results in immune deficiency, it may alter the ability of HIV patients to mount proper immune responses against malaria parasites. We measured specific malaria antibodies in 47 specimens from 25 couples from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), accord...

The relationship between malaria transmission intensity and efficiency is important for malaria epidemiology, for the design of randomized control trials that measure transmission or incidence as end points, and for measuring and modelling malaria transmission and control. Five kinds of studies published over the past century were assembled and reanalysed to quantify malaria transmission effici...

BACKGROUND Current methods for detecting malaria parasites are invasive and associated with poor compliance when repeated sampling is required. New methods to detect and quantify parasites in a less-invasive manner would greatly enhance the potential for longitudinal surveillance in clinical trials. METHODS Saliva, urine, and blood samples from 386 Gambian outpatients with suspected malaria i...

To study the effects of malaria-control interventions on parasite population genomics, we examined a set of 1,007 samples of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum collected in Thiès, Senegal between 2006 and 2013. The parasite samples were genotyped using a molecular barcode of 24 SNPs. About 35% of the samples grouped into subsets with identical barcodes, varying in size by year and somet...

Current first-line treatments for uncomplicated falciparum malaria rapidly clear the asexual stages of the parasite, but do not fully prevent parasite transmission by mosquitoes. The standard membrane feeding assay (SMFA) is the biological gold standard assessment of transmission reducing activity (TRA), but its throughput is limited by the need to determine mosquito infection status by dissect...

Within the human host, the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is exposed to multiple selection pressures. The host environment changes dramatically in severe malaria, but the extent to which the parasite responds to—or is selected by—this environment remains unclear. From previous studies, the parasites that cause severe malaria appear to increase expression of a restricted but poorly defin...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Morbidity and mortality due to falciparum malaria are increasing in many tropical areas. The situation is further complicated by drug resistant malaria. The present study was undertaken to evaluate the efficacy of arteether on acute chloroquine resistant Plasmodium falciparum malaria in eastern coalfield area of Asansol. METHODS A total of 30 patients with chloroquine ...

Malaria, caused by the apicomplexan parasite Plasmodium, threatens 40% of the world's population. Transmission between vertebrate and insect hosts depends on the sexual stages of the life-cycle. The male gamete of Plasmodium parasite is the only developmental stage that possesses a flagellum. Very little is known about the identity or function of proteins in the parasite's flagellar biology. He...

Just like the Zika-Virus, malaria is a vector-borne disease with three interacting population components. These are the parasite component, the vector component and the human component. The behavioral dynamics of each of these components play an integral role in the transmission dynamics of malaria. For example, there is a reproductive gain that accrue to the mosquito’s population as a result o...

The incidence of Plasmodium falciparum infection has been followed in a birth cohort of 71 infants in southern Ghana, an area of perennial malaria transmission. Parasite DNA detection established the presence of a high rate of infection in newborns (13.6%), a low level of infection from two to 26 weeks (1.5-9.7%) and a steadily increasing parasite rate from 26 weeks of age. The median age to fi...