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Failure to detect Plasmodium vivax in West and Central Africa by PCR species typing

Richard L Culleton1,12 email, Toshihiro Mita2 email, Mathieu Ndounga3 email, Holger Unger4 email, Pedro VL Cravo5 email, Giacomo M Paganotti7 email, Nobuyuki Takahashi2 email, Akira Kaneko6 email, Hideaki Eto2 email, Halidou Tinto10 email, Corine Karema11 email, Umberto D'Alessandro9 email, Virgilio do Rosário5 email, Takatoshi Kobayakawa2 email, Francine Ntoumi8 email, Richard Carter4 email and Kazuyuki Tanabe1 email

Laboratory of Malariology, International Research Centre of Infectious Diseases, Research Institute of Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

Tokyo Women's Medical University, Tokyo, Japan

Centre d'Etudes des Resources Vegetales, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo

Institute of Immunology and Infection Research, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Centro de Malária e Outras Doenças Tropicais, Lisbon, Portugal

Department of Medicine, Karolinska University Hospital, Solna, Sweden

Istituto Pasteur, Fondazione Cenci-Bolognetti, Università di Roma 'La Sapienza', Rome, Italy

Medical Research Unit, Albert Schweitzer Hospital, Lambaréné, Gabon

Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium

10  Centre Muraz, Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso

11  Programme Nationale de Lutte Integrée contre le Paludisme, Kigali, Rwanda

12  Department of Protozoology, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan

author email corresponding author email

Malaria Journal 2008, 7:174doi:10.1186/1475-2875-7-174

Published: 11 September 2008

Abstract

Background

Plasmodium vivax is estimated to affect 75 million people annually. It is reportedly absent, however, from west and central Africa due to the high prevalence of the Duffy negative phenotype in the indigenous populations. Despite this, non-African travellers consistently return to their own countries with P. vivax malaria after visiting this region. An attempt was made, therefore, to detect the presence of P. vivax parasites in blood samples collected from the indigenous populations of west and central Africa.

Methods

Parasite species typing (for all four human malaria parasites) was carried out by PCR on 2,588 blood samples collected from individuals from nine African malaria-endemic countries.

Results

Most infections (98.5%) were Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium malariae was identified in 8.5% of all infections, and Plasmodium ovale in 3.9%. The prevalence of both parasites varied greatly by country. Only one case of P. vivax was detected from Sao Tome, an island off the west coast of Africa, confirming the scarcity of this parasite in Africa.

Conclusion

The prevalence of P. vivax in local populations in sub-Saharan Africa is very low, despite the frequent identification of this parasite in non-African travellers.


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