Genotyping of Anopheles mosquito blood meals reveals nonrandom human host selection: implications for human-to-mosquito Plasmodium falciparum transmission

Abstract

Background Control of malaria parasite transmission can be enhanced by understanding which human demographic groups serve as the infectious reservoirs. Because vector biting can be heterogeneous, some infected individuals may contribute more to human-to-mosquito transmission than others. Infection prevalence peaks in school-age children, but it is not known how often they are fed upon. Genotypic profiling of human blood permits identification of individual humans who were bitten. The present investigation used this method to estimate which human demographic groups were most responsible for transmitting malaria parasites to Anopheles mosquitoes. It was hypothesized that school-age children contribute more than other demographic groups to human-to-mosquito malaria transmission. Methods In a region of moderate-to-high malaria incidence in southeastern Malawi, randomly selected households were surveyed to collect human demographic information and blood samples. Blood-fed, female Anopheles mosquitoes were sampled indoors from the same houses. Genomic DNA from human blood samples and mosquito blood meals of human origin was genotyped using 24 microsatellite loci. The resultant genotypes were matched to identify which individual humans were sources of blood meals. In addition, Plasmodium falciparum DNA in mosquito abdomens was detected with polymerase chain reaction. The combined results were used to identify which humans were most frequently bitten, and the P. falciparum infection prevalence in mosquitoes that resulted from these blood meals. Results Anopheles females selected human hosts non-randomly and fed on more than one human in 9% of the blood meals. Few humans contributed most of the blood meals to the Anopheles vector population. Children ≤ 5 years old were under-represented in mosquito blood meals while older males (31–75 years old) were over-represented. However, the largest number of malaria-infected blood meals was from school age children (6–15 years old). Conclusions The results support the hypothesis that humans aged 6–15 years are the most important demographic group contributing to the transmission of P. falciparum to the Anopheles mosquito vectors. This conclusion suggests that malaria control and prevention programmes should enhance efforts targeting school-age children and males.

Modelling the within-host dynamics ofPlasmodium vivaxhypnozoite activation: an analysis of the SPf66 vaccine trial

“…The acquisition of anti-disease immunity is determined by the force of inoculation, and the access to treatment, but is modelled indirectly as a deterministic function of age. We note that age-dependent differences in mosquito inoculation rates will also result in age-dependent differences in hypnozoite burdens [28, 29].…”

bistro: An R package for vector bloodmeal identification by short tandem repeat overlap

“…While matching people to bloodmeals is not a new concept, to our knowledge, no software packages exist that provide user‐friendly implementations of bloodmeal–human matching algorithms. Thus, the bistro R package implements not only our newly proposed bistro algorithm but also three pre‐existing methods for matching STR profiles: exact (Soremekun et al., 2004), similarity (Keven et al., 2021; Mbewe et al., 2023) and static threshold (Bleka et al., 2019) (Table 1). Exact and similarity matching have been used to match mosquito bloodmeals to people bitten, while static threshold matching is commonly used in forensics.…”

“…STR genotyping has been used to profile human bloodmeals in sandflies (Inbar et al., 2016), lice (Mumcuoglu et al., 2004) and mosquitoes (Gonçalves et al., 2017; Keven et al., 2021; Mbewe et al., 2023; Soremekun et al., 2004). Existing methods for matching STR profiles in bloodmeals to the people bitten require exact, or near‐exact, matching of all alleles at all loci between a bloodmeal and the person bitten.…”

bistro: An R package for vector bloodmeal identification by short tandem repeat overlap

“…STR genotyping has been used to profile human bloodmeals in sandflies (Inbar et al, 2016), lice (Mumcuoglu et al, 2004), and mosquitoes (Soremekun et al, 2004; Gonçalves et al, 2017; Keven et al, 2021; Mbewe et al, 2023). Existing methods for matching STR profiles in bloodmeals to the people bitten require exact, or near-exact, matching of all alleles at all loci between a bloodmeal and the person bitten.…”

“…While matching people to bloodmeals is not a new concept, to our knowledge no software packages exist that provide user-friendly implementations of bloodmeal-human matching algorithms. Thus, the bistro R package implements not only our newly proposed bistro algorithm, but also three pre-existing methods for matching STR profiles: exact (Soremekun et al, 2004), similarity (Keven et al, 2021; Mbewe et al, 2023), and static threshold (Bleka et al, 2019) ( Table 1 ). Exact and similarity matching have been used to match mosquito bloodmeals to people bitten, while static threshold matching is commonly used in forensics.…”