Dados do Trabalho

Título

Evaluation of Plasmodium vivax from treated patients able to infect Anopheles aquasalis: Effect of drug treatment

Introdução

Plasmodium vivax is the leading causative agent of malaria in the Brazilian Amazon region. The WHO recommends for first-line therapy the combination of chloroquine/primaquine.

Objetivo(s)

In this study, we investigate the effect and /or interference of drugs taken by patients with malaria vivax in transmitting the infection to the An. aquasalis.

Material e Métodos

Patients are recruited from the Fundação de Medicina Tropical Heitor Vieira Dourado (FMT-HDV), Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. They received different supervised therapeutic protocols. We are collecting blood samples from these patients before (T0) and after treatment every 8 h (T1, T2, T3) for up to 4 days post-infection (d.p.i.). Plasmodium vivax in the blood is confirmed and quantified by thick smear. The mosquitoes used are obtained from colonies established in the Department of Entomology of the FMT-HDV. They are being infected by membrane glass-feeding devices using whole infected blood from the treated patients and kept in the insectary until they are dissected at 8 and 15 d.p.i. When evaluating mosquitoes' infection with infected patients' blood at different times (up to 30 h), the presence and development of P. vivax oocysts in the mosquito's intestine are observed.

Resultados e Conclusão

This study aims to determine how antimalarial treatment works after the drug ingestion by the patients, and the time P. vivax remains infective to the vectors contributing to maintaining active foci. Resuming, we are testing the capacity of P. vivax to infect An. aquasalis from patients in early stages of treatment with common antimalarial drugs. This new knowledge, not yet known in the literature, will have important implications for the epidemiology of the disease and future studies indicating how transmission occurs in the field.

Palavras-chave

Plasmodium vivax; antimalarial drugs; patient treatments; vector competence.