First case of a naturally acquired human infection with Plasmodium cynomolgi

Malaria Journal

Case Report

Marta Lanza¹  Thuy H Ta¹  José M Rubio¹  Adela I Jiram²  Shamilah Hisam²  NorParina Ismail² 

[1] Malaria & Emerging Parasitic Diseases Laboratory, Parasitology Department, National Microbiology Centre, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Cra. Majadahonda Pozuelo Km. 2, 28220, Majadahonda, Madrid, Spain;Paal Research, 50588, Jalan Pahang, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia;

关键词: Plasmodium vivax;    Plasmodium cynomolgi;    Molecular methods;    Malaysia;    Simian malaria;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-13-68

 received in 2013-12-13, accepted in 2014-02-18,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Since 1960, a total of seven species of monkey malaria have been reported as transmissible to man by mosquito bite: Plasmodium cynomolgi, Plasmodium brasilianum, Plasmodium eylesi, Plasmodium knowlesi, Plasmodium inui, Plasmodium schwetzi and Plasmodium simium. With the exception of P. knowlesi, none of the other species has been found to infect humans in nature. In this report, it is described the first known case of a naturally acquired P. cynomolgi malaria in humans.The patient was a 39-year-old woman from a malaria-free area with no previous history of malaria or travel to endemic areas. Initially, malaria was diagnosed and identified as Plasmodium malariae/P. knowlesi by microscopy in the Terengganu State Health Department. Thick and thin blood films stained with 10% Giemsa were performed for microscopy examination. Molecular species identification was performed at the Institute for Medical Research (IMR, Malaysia) and in the Malaria & Emerging Parasitic Diseases Laboratory (MAPELAB, Spain) using different nested PCR methods.Microscopic re-examination in the IMR showed characteristics of Plasmodium vivax and was confirmed by a nested PCR assay developed by Snounou et al. Instead, a different PCR assay plus sequencing performed at the MAPELAB confirmed that the patient was infected with P. cynomolgi and not with P. vivax.This is the first report of human P. cynomolgi infection acquired in a natural way, but there might be more undiagnosed or misdiagnosed cases, since P. cynomolgi is morphologically indistinguishable from P. vivax, and one of the most used PCR methods for malaria infection detection may identify a P. cynomolgi infection as P. vivax.Simian Plasmodium species may routinely infect humans in Southeast Asia. New diagnostic methods are necessary to distinguish between the human and monkey malaria species. Further epidemiological studies, incriminating also the mosquito vector(s), must be performed to know the relevance of cynomolgi malaria and its implication on human public health and in the control of human malaria.The zoonotic malaria cannot be ignored in view of increasing interactions between man and wild animals in the process of urbanization.

【 授权许可】

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© Ta et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.