Ribeiro de Castro Duarte AM, Fernandes LN, Silva FS, Sicchi IL, Mucci LF, Curado I, Fernandes A, Medeiros-Sousa AR, Ceretti-Junior W, Marrelli MT, Evangelista E, Teixeira R, Summa JL, Nardi MS, Garnica MR, Loss AC, Buery JC, Cerutti Jr. C, Pacheco MA, Escalante AA, Mureb Sallum MA, Laporta GZ. Complexity of malaria transmission dynamics in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
CURRENT RESEARCH IN PARASITOLOGY & VECTOR-BORNE DISEASES 2021;
1:100032. [PMID:
35284897 PMCID:
PMC8906072 DOI:
10.1016/j.crpvbd.2021.100032]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/09/2021] [Revised: 05/07/2021] [Accepted: 05/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium vivax are protozoan parasites that can cause malaria in humans. They are genetically indistinguishable from, respectively, Plasmodium brasilianum and Plasmodium simium, i.e. parasites infecting New World non-human primates in South America. In the tropical rainforests of the Brazilian Atlantic coast, it has long been hypothesized that P. brasilianum and P. simium in platyrrhine primates originated from P. malariae and P. vivax in humans. A recent hypothesis proposed the inclusion of Plasmodium falciparum into the transmission dynamics between humans and non-human primates in the Brazilian Atlantic tropical rainforest. Herein, we assess the occurrence of human malaria in simians and sylvatic anophelines using field-collected samples in the Capivari-Monos Environmental Protection Area from 2015 to 2017. We first tested simian blood and anopheline samples. Two simian (Aloutta) blood samples (18%, n = 11) showed Plasmodium cytb DNA sequences, one for P. vivax and another for P. malariae. From a total of 9,416 anopheline females, we found 17 pools positive for Plasmodium species with a 18S qPCR assay. Only three showed P. cytb DNA sequence, one for P. vivax and the others for rodent malaria species (similar to Plasmodium chabaudi and Plasmodium berghei). Based on these results, we tested 25 rodent liver samples for the presence of Plasmodium and obtained P. falciparum cytb DNA sequence in a rodent (Oligoryzomys sp.) liver. The findings of this study indicate complex malaria transmission dynamics composed by parallel spillover-spillback of human malaria parasites, i.e. P. malariae, P. vivax, and P. falciparum, in the Brazilian Atlantic forest.
Human malaria parasites circulate in sylvatic cycles in the Brazilian Atlantic forest.
Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium malariae identified in simian blood samples.
Plasmodium falciparum detected in a rodent liver sample.
Anopheline vectors found to carry human and rodent malaria parasites.
Local vector ecology and biology are key to the spillover-spillback of human malaria parasites.
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