Complexity of Plasmodium falciparum infection and genetic variations associated with differences in parasite clearance time in two Malian villages

BACKGROUND: Effective approaches to fight against malaria include disease prevention, an early diagnosis of malaria cases, and rapid management of confirmed cases by treatment with effective antimalarials. Artemisinin-based combination therapies are first-line treatments for uncomplicated malaria in endemic areas. However, cases of resistance to artemisinin have already been described in South-East Asia resulting in prolonged parasite clearance time after treatment. In Mali, though mutations in the K13 gene associated with delayed clearance in Asia are absent, a significant difference in parasite clearance time following treatment with artesunate was observed between two malaria endemic sites, Bougoula-Hameau and Faladje. Hypothetically, differences in complexity of Plasmodium falciparum infections may be accounted for this difference. Hence, the aims of this study were to assess the complexity of infection (COI) and genetic diversity of P. falciparum parasites during malaria treatment in Bougoula-Hameau and Faladje in Mali. METHODS: Thirty (30) patients per village were randomly selected from 221 patients enrolled in a prospective artesunate monotherapy study conducted in Faladje and Bougoula-Hameau in 2016. All parasitemic blood samples of patients from enrollment to last positive slide were retained to assess malaria parasite COI and polymorphisms. DNA were extracted with a Qiagen kit and Pfcsp and Pfama1 encoding gene were amplified by nested PCR and sequenced using the Illumina platform. The parasite clearance time (PCT) was determined using the parasite clearance estimator of Worldwide Antimarial Resistance Network (WWARN). Data were analyzed with R(®). RESULTS: The median number of genetically distinct parasite clones was similar at enrollment, 7 (IQR of 5–9) in Faladje and 6 (IQR of 4–10) in Bougoula-Hameau (p-value = 0.1). On the first day after treatment initiation, the COI was higher in Faladje (6; CI:4–8) than in Bougoula-Hameau (4; CI:4–6) with a p-value =0. 02. Overall, COI was high with higher PCT. Finally, there was a low genetic diversity between Faladje and Bougoula-Hameau CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that the difference in PCT observed between the two villages could be due to differences in the complexity of infection of these two villages.