ArticlePLoS pathogens2015
Within-host competition does not select for virulence in malaria parasites; studies with Plasmodium yoelii.
Article in PLoS pathogens, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Disentangling Environmental and Within-Host Drivers of Parasite Dynamics in Natural Populations.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Competitive suppression and release in artemisinin-resistantEvolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- Plasmodium yoelii as a model for malaria: insights into pathogenesis, drug resistance, and vaccine development.Molecular biology reports · 2025Review
- Adaptive immunity inApplied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Tick-to-host transmission differs betweenMicrobiology spectrum · 2023Article
- Plasmodium vivax: the potential obstacles it presents to malaria elimination and eradication.Tropical diseases, travel medicine and vaccines · 2022Review
- Killing the competition: a theoretical framework for liver-stage malaria.Open biology · 2022Article
- Parasite co-infection: an ecological, molecular and experimental perspective.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Differential tissue distribution of discrete typing units after drug combination therapy in experimentalParasitology · 2021Article
- Plasmodium vinckei genomes provide insights into the pan-genome and evolution of rodent malaria parasites.BMC biology · 2021Article
- Intrinsic multiplication rate variation and plasticity of human blood stage malaria parasites.Communications biology · 2020Article
- Pairwise growth competitions identify relative fitness relationships among artemisinin resistant Plasmodium falciparum field isolates.Malaria journal · 2019Article
- Competition Between Strains ofFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2019Article
- The Consequences of Mixed-Species Malaria Parasite Co-Infections in Mice and Mosquitoes for Disease Severity, Parasite Fitness, and Transmission Success.Frontiers in immunology · 2019Article
- Intra-host dynamics of co-infecting parasite genotypes in asymptomatic malaria patients.Infection, genetics and evolution : journal of molecular epidemiology and evolutionary genetics in infectious diseases · 2018Article
- Competition between strains ofProceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Multiplication rate variation in the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Rapid identification of genes controlling virulence and immunity in malaria parasites.PLoS pathogens · 2017Article
- The Entomopathogenic FungiFrontiers in microbiology · 2017Article
- Comparison of the lifetime host-to-tick transmission between two strains of the Lyme disease pathogen Borrelia afzelii.Parasites & vectors · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In endemic areas with high transmission intensities, malaria infections are very often composed of multiple genetically distinct strains of malaria parasites. It has been hypothesised that this leads to intra-host competition, in which parasite strains compete for resources such as space and nutrients. This competition may have repercussions for the host, the parasite, and the vector in terms of disease severity, vector fitness, and parasite transmission potential and fitness. It has also been argued that within-host competition could lead to selection for more virulent parasites. Here we use the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium yoelii to assess the consequences of mixed strain infections on disease severity and parasite fitness. Three isogenic strains with dramatically different growth rates (and hence virulence) were maintained in mice in single infections or in mixed strain infections with a genetically distinct strain. We compared the virulence (defined as harm to the mammalian host) of mixed strain infections with that of single infections, and assessed whether competition impacted on parasite fitness, assessed by transmission potential. We found that mixed infections were associated with a higher degree of disease severity and a prolonged infection time. In the mixed infections, the strain with the slower growth rate was often responsible for the competitive exclusion of the faster growing strain, presumably through host immune-mediated mechanisms. Importantly, and in contrast to previous work conducted with Plasmodium chabaudi, we found no correlation between parasite virulence and transmission potential to mosquitoes, suggesting that within-host competition would not drive the evolution of parasite virulence in P. yoelii.
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