Estimating the degree of infection of Plasmodium berghei infected red blood cells by evaluation of pyruvate kinase activity.

A procedure is proposed to estimate the parasitemia of red blood cells infected with P. berghei by determination of pyruvate kinase activity. The activity of this enzyme shows a linear dependence not on the relative number of infected cells but on the average number of parasites per red blood cell. To provide a transformation between these two parameters a theoretical model of multiple infections of blood cells is derived, the accuracy of which was proved experimentally.