Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 12, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-26625-w
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Funding
- DELTAS Africa Initiative [DELGEME grant] [107740/Z/15/Z]
- African Academy of Sciences (AAS)'s Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA)
- New Partnership for Africa's Development Planning and Coordinating Agency (NEPAD Agency)
- Wellcome Trust [DELGEME grant] [107740/Z/15/Z]
- UK government
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Plasmodium malariae, a neglected human malaria parasite, contributes up to 10% of malaria infections in sub-Saharan Africa (sSA). Genetic analysis revealed high diversity and evidence of antimalarial drug selection in P. malariae infections, calling for its inclusion in malaria genomic surveillance for improved malaria elimination strategies.
Plasmodium malariae, a neglected human malaria parasite, contributes up to 10% of malaria infections in sub-Saharan Africa (sSA). Though P. malariae infection is considered clinically benign, it presents mostly as coinfections with the dominant P. falciparum. Completion of its reference genome has paved the way to further understand its biology and interactions with the human host, including responses to antimalarial interventions. We characterized 75 P. malariae isolates from seven endemic countries in sSA using highly divergent microsatellites. The P. malariae infections were highly diverse and five subpopulations from three ancestries (independent of origin of isolates) were determined. Sequences of 11 orthologous antimalarial resistance genes, identified low frequency single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), strong linkage disequilibrium between loci that may be due to antimalarial drug selection. At least three sub-populations were detectable from a subset of denoised SNP data from mostly the mitochondrial cytochrome b coding region. This evidence of diversity and selection calls for including P. malariae in malaria genomic surveillance towards improved tools and strategies for malaria elimination.
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