Ariey Frédéric, Duchemin Jean-Bernard, Robert Vincent
Groupe de Recherche sur le Paludisme, Institut Pasteur de Madagascar, BP 1274, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar.
Infect Genet Evol. 2003 Feb;2(3):185-92. doi: 10.1016/s1567-1348(02)00099-0.
Studying the structure of metapopulations is a new concept in population genetics of infectious diseases that is particularly adapted to the analysis of parasite populations. We considered one application of this theory focusing on Plasmodium falciparum populations. Our study consisted of three main steps: the relevance of the approach, the proposal of a simplified model using metapopulation concepts, and the exploration of the consequences on antimalarial drug resistance. Our main result concerns the metapopulation structure that is appropriate in some real situations. In intertropical rural Africa, parasite populations can be considered to be patchy, comparable to the panmictic situation in which a high transmission rate associated with a high prevalence (generally higher than 50%) implies that no diferenciation occurs between sub populations. In contrast, in Asia and South America, there are great variations in endemicity (with prevalences ranging from 0 to 100%) consistent with a typical metapopulation dynamic structure and a high probability of differentiation between patches. These findings agree with the observed emergence of chloroquine resistance in south-east Asia and South American but not in Africa, and with its rapid spread following its introduction.
研究集合种群结构是传染病种群遗传学中的一个新概念，特别适用于寄生虫种群分析。我们考虑了该理论在恶性疟原虫种群研究中的一个应用。我们的研究包括三个主要步骤：该方法的相关性、使用集合种群概念提出一个简化模型，以及探究对抗疟药物耐药性的影响。我们的主要研究结果涉及在某些实际情况下合适的集合种群结构。在热带非洲农村地区，寄生虫种群可被视为呈斑块状分布，类似于随机交配的情况，即高传播率与高流行率（通常高于50%）意味着亚种群之间不会发生分化。相比之下，在亚洲和南美洲，流行程度存在很大差异（流行率从0到100%不等），这与典型的集合种群动态结构以及斑块之间高分化概率相符。这些发现与在东南亚和南美洲但不在非洲观察到的氯喹耐药性的出现情况相符，也与氯喹引入后迅速传播的情况相符。
