Complete in vitro maturation of Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes
Complete in vitro maturation of Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes
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DOI：
10.1038/294364a0
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发表时间：
1981-11-01
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Vanderberg, J. P.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ifediba, T.;Vanderberg, J. P.
由恶性疟原虫引起的疟疾可能是人类最重要的传染病。仅在热带非洲，疟疾就影响了几乎所有人口，据估计，每年该疾病导致 100 万 14 岁以下儿童死亡(1)。当疟疾蚊媒摄入人类携带者血液中的成熟配子体时，就会受到感染。寄生虫在蚊子体内继续发育，并在子孢子阶段达到顶峰，当蚊子将其注射到其他人类宿主体内时，会引发新的感染。由于普遍缺乏合适的配子体患者，对恶性疟原虫子孢子的研究受到严重限制。人们希望最近开发的恶性疟原虫连续培养(2)能够解决这个问题，因为配子体在培养过程中经常产生。然而，我们和其他人很快发现这些配子体在培养物中未能成熟(3,4)，或者充其量只是很少且不可预测地成熟(5-7)。我们在此报告，在培养基中添加次黄嘌呤可以定期产生成熟的、传染性的恶性疟原虫配子细胞。
The form of malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum is probably the most important infectious disease of man. In tropical Africa alone, where malaria affects almost the entire population, it has been estimated that every year the disease causes the death of 1 million children under 14 yr old(1). The mosquito vector of malaria is infected when it ingests mature gametocytes in blood taken from a human carrier of the disease. Development of the parasite continues in the mosquito and culminates with the sporozoite stage, which initiates a new infection when injected by the mosquito into a further human host. Research on P. falciparum sporozoites has been severely limited by a general lack of availability of suitable patients with gametocytes. It was hoped that the recently developed continuous cultivation of P. falciparum(2) would solve this, as gametocytes are often produced during cultivation. However, we and others soon found that these gametocytes failed to mature in culture(3,4), or at best did so only rarely and unpredictably(5-7). We report here that addition of hypoxanthine to the culture medium permits the production of mature, infectious A falciparum gametocytes on a regular basis.