ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2010
Parasite virulence when the infection reduces the host immune response.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Coinfections Dampen the Effects of Temperature on Host-Parasite Interactions.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- In vivo reduction of Treg expansion in rodent helminth-malaria coinfection.Parasites & vectors · 2026Article
- Trematode infection buffers heat stress in blue mussels Mytilus edulis: The role of heat shock proteins.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- How do parasites and predators choose their victim? A trade-off between quality and vulnerability across antagonistic interactions.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Feeding the fever: Complex host-pathogen dynamics along continuous resource gradients.Ecology and evolution · 2023Review
- Immune gene expression in the mosquito vector Culex quinquefasciatus during an avian malaria infection.Molecular ecology · 2023Article
- Hooking the scientific community on thorny-headed worms: interesting and exciting facts, knowledge gaps and perspectives for research directions on Acanthocephala.Parasite (Paris, France) · 2023Article
- A large-scale epidemiological investigation on trematode infections in small ruminants in Bangladesh.Veterinary medicine and science · 2022Article
- The Malnutritional Status of the Host as a Virulence Factor for New Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.Frontiers in medicine · 2020Article
- Parasite resource manipulation drives bimodal variation in infection duration.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Body Condition Peaks at Intermediate Parasite Loads in the Common Bully Gobiomorphus cotidianus.PloS one · 2016Article
- Host manipulation in the face of environmental changes: Ecological consequences.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2015Article
- Disentangling the interaction among host resources, the immune system and pathogens.Ecology letters · 2014Article
- Immune evasion, immunopathology and the regulation of the immune system.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2013Review
- Avian haemosporidian persistence and co-infection in great tits at the individual level.Malaria journal · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Parasite infections often induce a reduction in host immune response either because of a direct manipulation of the immune system by the parasite or because of energy depletion. Although infection-induced immunodepression can favour the establishment of the parasite within the host, a too severe immunodepression may increase the risk of infection with opportunistic pathogens, stopping the period over which the parasite can be transmitted to other hosts. Here, we explore how the risk of contracting opportunistic diseases affects the survival of the amphipod Gammarus pulex infected by the acanthocephalan Pomphorhynchus laevis. Previous work with this system has shown that upon infection, G. pulex has a substantially reduced immune response. Non-infected and P. laevis-infected hosts were maintained either in control or in micro-organism-enriched water, so as to vary the risk of encountering opportunistic pathogens. As predicted, we found that host mortality was exacerbated when infected gammarids were maintained in micro-organism-enriched water compared with clean, control water; whereas for non-infected gammarids, living in micro-organism-enriched water only moderately increased the risk of mortality. These results show that the virulence of parasites that reduce the host immune response is an environmentally sensitive trait that depends on the concomitant risk for the host of contracting opportunistic diseases. This extra source of host mortality probably represents a cost for P. laevis, and we tentatively predict that the optimal level of parasite exploitation should depend on environmental conditions.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.