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

doi:10.1186/1475-2875-7-174

Malaria Journal

Volume 7

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Culleton RL
Mita T
Ndounga M
Unger H
Cravo PV
Paganotti GM
Takahashi N
Kaneko A
Eto H
Tinto H
Karema C
D'Alessandro U
do Rosário V
Kobayakawa T
Ntoumi F
Carter R
Tanabe K

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Culleton RL
Mita T
Ndounga M
Unger H
Cravo PV
Paganotti GM
Takahashi N
Kaneko A
Eto H
Tinto H
Karema C
D'Alessandro U
do Rosário V
Kobayakawa T
Ntoumi F
Carter R
Tanabe K
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Research

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

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

¹Laboratory of Malariology, International Research Centre of Infectious Diseases, Research Institute of Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

²Tokyo Women's Medical University, Tokyo, Japan

³Centre d'Etudes des Resources Vegetales, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo

⁴Institute of Immunology and Infection Research, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

⁵Centro de Malária e Outras Doenças Tropicais, Lisbon, Portugal

⁶Department of Medicine, Karolinska University Hospital, Solna, Sweden

⁷Istituto Pasteur, Fondazione Cenci-Bolognetti, Università di Roma 'La Sapienza', Rome, Italy

⁸Medical Research Unit, Albert Schweitzer Hospital, Lambaréné, Gabon

⁹Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium

¹⁰Centre Muraz, Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso

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

¹²Department 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.