A new report suggests that current methods may significantly overestimate the multiplication rates of malaria parasites in a person's bloodstream. This overestimation has crucial implications for assessing the potential harm these parasites can inflict on their host. Moreover, the study's finding
Current methods significantly overestimate the multiplication rates of malaria parasites in an infected person’s blood due to sampling biases and false inferences in previous computer models, a new report reveals. This overestimation has critical implications for assessing parasite harm to hosts, understanding the evolution of drug resistance traits, predicting parasite spread, and evaluating new malaria vaccine effectiveness.
“The inability to accurately measure those rates is concerning,” said Megan Greischar, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and corresponding author on the paper. Lauren Childs, associate professor of mathematics at Virginia Tech, is a co-author.
Infected mosquitoes pass the malaria parasite into a human host during a blood meal. The parasites then multiply first in liver cells before moving into red blood cells. There, in synchrony with each other, parasites replicate inside the red blood cells and burst out into the blood, killing the cells. The daughter parasites then continue the next cycle and invade new red blood cells. This cycle repeats about every 48 hours.
Previous models used for estimating parasite multiplication rates tried to correct for this sampling bias by inferring how many parasites might exist later in a parasite brood’s life cycle when they can’t be directly observed. This study suggests that those methods were insufficient to determine how fast parasites actually multiply.
Using a mathematical model, combined with both modern and historical data from people infected with malaria, the researchers were able to identify that inferences made in previous models of parasite counts led to parasite multiplication rates that were orders of magnitude higher than what was possible.
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