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BMC Medicine
Published in: BMC Medicine 1/2016

Open Access 01-12-2016 | Commentary

How important is gametocyte clearance after malaria therapy?

Authors: Harin A. Karunajeewa, Ivo Mueller

Published in: BMC Medicine | Issue 1/2016

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Abstract

There has been increasing interest in the role of malaria drugs in preventing malaria transmission from humans to mosquitoes, which would help augment malaria control and elimination strategies. Nevertheless, only one stage in the malaria parasite life cycle, the gametocyte, is infectious to mosquitoes. The Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN) have analyzed data from 48,840 patients from 141 clinical trials in order to define the nature and determinants of gametocyte clearance following artemisinin combination treatment (ACT) for symptomatic malaria infections. However, the presence of gametocytes does not always predict their infectivity, meaning that the microscopy-based methods used by the WWARN investigators represent an imperfect surrogate marker of transmissibility. Their findings, that some ACTs clear gametocytes faster than others, should be interpreted in light of these limitations and important gaps in our understanding of the biology and epidemiology of malaria transmission.
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Metadata
Title
How important is gametocyte clearance after malaria therapy?
Authors
Harin A. Karunajeewa
Ivo Mueller
Publication date
01-12-2016
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Medicine / Issue 1/2016
Electronic ISSN: 1741-7015
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-016-0641-3

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