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Existing Infection Facilitates Establishment and Density of Malaria Parasites in Their Mosquito Vector

Very little is known about how vector-borne pathogens interact within their vector and how this impacts transmission. Here we show that mosquitoes can accumulate mixed strain malaria infections after feeding on multiple hosts. We found that parasites have a greater chance of establishing and reach h...

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Autores principales: Pollitt, Laura C., Bram, Joshua T., Blanford, Simon, Jones, Matthew J., Read, Andrew F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26181518
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1005003
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author Pollitt, Laura C.
Bram, Joshua T.
Blanford, Simon
Jones, Matthew J.
Read, Andrew F.
author_facet Pollitt, Laura C.
Bram, Joshua T.
Blanford, Simon
Jones, Matthew J.
Read, Andrew F.
author_sort Pollitt, Laura C.
collection PubMed
description Very little is known about how vector-borne pathogens interact within their vector and how this impacts transmission. Here we show that mosquitoes can accumulate mixed strain malaria infections after feeding on multiple hosts. We found that parasites have a greater chance of establishing and reach higher densities if another strain is already present in a mosquito. Mixed infections contained more parasites but these larger populations did not have a detectable impact on vector survival. Together these results suggest that mosquitoes taking multiple infective bites may disproportionally contribute to malaria transmission. This will increase rates of mixed infections in vertebrate hosts, with implications for the evolution of parasite virulence and the spread of drug-resistant strains. Moreover, control measures that reduce parasite prevalence in vertebrate hosts will reduce the likelihood of mosquitoes taking multiple infective feeds, and thus disproportionally reduce transmission. More generally, our study shows that the types of strain interactions detected in vertebrate hosts cannot necessarily be extrapolated to vectors.
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spelling pubmed-45044732015-07-17 Existing Infection Facilitates Establishment and Density of Malaria Parasites in Their Mosquito Vector Pollitt, Laura C. Bram, Joshua T. Blanford, Simon Jones, Matthew J. Read, Andrew F. PLoS Pathog Research Article Very little is known about how vector-borne pathogens interact within their vector and how this impacts transmission. Here we show that mosquitoes can accumulate mixed strain malaria infections after feeding on multiple hosts. We found that parasites have a greater chance of establishing and reach higher densities if another strain is already present in a mosquito. Mixed infections contained more parasites but these larger populations did not have a detectable impact on vector survival. Together these results suggest that mosquitoes taking multiple infective bites may disproportionally contribute to malaria transmission. This will increase rates of mixed infections in vertebrate hosts, with implications for the evolution of parasite virulence and the spread of drug-resistant strains. Moreover, control measures that reduce parasite prevalence in vertebrate hosts will reduce the likelihood of mosquitoes taking multiple infective feeds, and thus disproportionally reduce transmission. More generally, our study shows that the types of strain interactions detected in vertebrate hosts cannot necessarily be extrapolated to vectors. Public Library of Science 2015-07-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4504473/ /pubmed/26181518 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1005003 Text en © 2015 Pollitt et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Pollitt, Laura C.
Bram, Joshua T.
Blanford, Simon
Jones, Matthew J.
Read, Andrew F.
Existing Infection Facilitates Establishment and Density of Malaria Parasites in Their Mosquito Vector
title Existing Infection Facilitates Establishment and Density of Malaria Parasites in Their Mosquito Vector
title_full Existing Infection Facilitates Establishment and Density of Malaria Parasites in Their Mosquito Vector
title_fullStr Existing Infection Facilitates Establishment and Density of Malaria Parasites in Their Mosquito Vector
title_full_unstemmed Existing Infection Facilitates Establishment and Density of Malaria Parasites in Their Mosquito Vector
title_short Existing Infection Facilitates Establishment and Density of Malaria Parasites in Their Mosquito Vector
title_sort existing infection facilitates establishment and density of malaria parasites in their mosquito vector
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26181518
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1005003
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