Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Institute of Immunology and Infection Research, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Trends Parasitol. 2019 May;35(5):341-355. doi: 10.1016/j.pt.2019.03.002. Epub 2019 Apr 2.
Malaria infection is often accompanied by periodic fevers, triggered by synchronous cycles of parasite replication within the host. The degree of synchrony in parasite development influences the efficacy of drugs and immune defenses and is therefore relevant to host health and infectiousness. Synchrony is thought to vary over the course of infection and across different host-parasite genotype or species combinations, but the evolutionary significance - if any - of this diversity remains elusive. Standardized methods are lacking, but the most common metric for quantifying synchrony is the percentage of parasites in a particular developmental stage. We use a heuristic model to show that this metric is often unacceptably biased. Methodological challenges must be addressed to characterize diverse patterns of synchrony and their consequences for disease severity and spread.
疟疾感染常伴有周期性发热，这是由寄生虫在宿主体内同步复制引发的。寄生虫发育的同步程度影响药物和免疫防御的效果，因此与宿主的健康和传染性有关。据认为，寄生虫的同步性会随着感染的过程和不同的宿主-寄生虫基因型或物种组合而变化，但这种多样性的进化意义（如果有的话）仍然难以捉摸。目前缺乏标准化的方法，但最常用的量化同步性的指标是特定发育阶段寄生虫的百分比。我们使用启发式模型表明，这个指标通常存在不可接受的偏差。必须解决方法学上的挑战，以描述不同的同步模式及其对疾病严重程度和传播的影响。
