kenneth wu

Introduction Plasmodium vivax, a parasite species causing human malaria, remains a hurdle to achieving malaria elimination due to its distinct biology, including an additional arrested stage in the liver (hypnozoites) that can cause relapsing infections.

Abstract Background: Plasmodium vivax poses a major obstacle to malaria elimination because it can lie dormant in the liver for weeks or months before reactivating and causing a relapse of infection. These dormant forms (hypnozoites) cannot be detected using standard diagnostics, but recent P. vivax exposure and by proxy, hypnozoite carriage, can be inferred using antibody-based tests (serological markers). In this study, we examined how genetic variation in P.