ArticleNature medicine2020
Increased circulation time of Plasmodium falciparum underlies persistent asymptomatic infection in the dry season.
Article in Nature medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 84 papers.
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Who cites it
84 citing papers in PubMed.
- Anti-sporozoite monoclonal antibody for malaria prevention: secondary efficacy outcome of a phase 2 randomized trial.Nature medicine · 2025Trial
- Safety and Efficacy of a Monoclonal Antibody against Malaria in Mali.The New England journal of medicine · 2022Trial
- Competitive resource allocation drives asynchronous and rapid nuclear multiplication in the malaria parasite.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Mechanistic insights into subclinicaliScience · 2026Review
- Febrile Temperature Augments Ring-stage Plasmodium falciparum Adhesion to Brain Endothelial Cells.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Mechanistic insights into coordinated var transcriptional switching in malaria parasites.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
- Longitudinal plasma metabolomics reveals a role for taurine in asymptomatic malaria and seasonal persistence.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- How taurine keeps asymptomatic malaria infections in check.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Rural-Urban Migration and Low-Transmission Endemicity of Malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Statistical Inference Approach to Uncover Possible Mechanisms.Journal of epidemiology and global health · 2026Article
- Lagged effect of temperature and rainfall on malaria incidence in Colombia (2013-2023): An approach with Bayesian spatiotemporal adjustment.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Serological evidence of high exposure toMalariaWorld journal · 2026Article
- Histone lactylation: A new epigenetic mark in the malaria parasite Plasmodium.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Trends in uncomplicated and severe malaria following seasonal malaria chemoprevention administration in Nouna, Burkina Faso: a quasi-experimental pre-post study.Malaria journal · 2025Article
- Plasmodium falciparum expresses fewer var genes at lower levels during asymptomatic dry season infections than clinical malaria cases.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Var genes, strain hyperdiversity, and malaria transmission dynamics.Trends in parasitology · 2025Review
- High incidence of clinical malaria among asymptomatic Plasmodium falciparum infected children receiving SMC with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and amodiaquine (SP + AQ) in Koulikoro, Mali.Malaria journal · 2025Article
- Variable surface antigen expression, virulence, and persistent infection byMicrobiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2025Review
- A Probabilistic Synthesis of Malaria Epidemiology: Exposure, Infection, Parasite Densities, and Detection.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Comparative immunological roles of TEP1 inFrontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Article
24 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
37 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The dry season is a major challenge for Plasmodium falciparum parasites in many malaria endemic regions, where water availability limits mosquito vectors to only part of the year. How P. falciparum bridges two transmission seasons months apart, without being cleared by the human host or compromising host survival, is poorly understood. Here we show that low levels of P. falciparum parasites persist in the blood of asymptomatic Malian individuals during the 5- to 6-month dry season, rarely causing symptoms and minimally affecting the host immune response. Parasites isolated during the dry season are transcriptionally distinct from those of individuals with febrile malaria in the transmission season, coinciding with longer circulation within each replicative cycle of parasitized erythrocytes without adhering to the vascular endothelium. Low parasite levels during the dry season are not due to impaired replication but rather to increased splenic clearance of longer-circulating infected erythrocytes, which likely maintain parasitemias below clinical and immunological radar. We propose that P. falciparum virulence in areas of seasonal malaria transmission is regulated so that the parasite decreases its endothelial binding capacity, allowing increased splenic clearance and enabling several months of subclinical parasite persistence.
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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.