An overview of malaria transmission from the perspective of Amazon Anopheles vectors

Abstract

In the Americas, areas with a high risk of malaria transmission are mainly located in the Amazon Forest, which extends across nine countries. One keystone step to understanding the Plasmodium life cycle in Anopheles species from the Amazon Region is to obtain experimentally infected mosquito vectors. Several attempts to colonise Ano- pheles species have been conducted, but with only short-lived success or no success at all. In this review, we review the literature on malaria transmission from the perspective of its Amazon vectors. Currently, it is possible to develop experimental Plasmodium vivax infection of the colonised and field-captured vectors in laboratories located close to Amazonian endemic areas. We are also reviewing studies related to the immune response to P. vivax infection of Anopheles aquasalis, a coastal mosquito species. Finally, we discuss the importance of the modulation of Plasmodium infection by the vector microbiota and also consider the anopheline genomes. The establishment of experimental mosquito infections with Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium yoelii and Plasmodium berghei parasites that could provide interesting models for studying malaria in the Amazonian scenario is important. Understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in the development of the parasites in New World vectors is crucial in order to better determine the interaction process and vectorial competence.

Diversity of Anopheles mosquitoes from four landscapes in the highest endemic region of malaria transmission in Brazil

“…albitarsis , and An. peryassui , for instance, have been considered malaria secondary vectors (Deane 1986, Pimenta et al 2015). In this scenario, the diversity in behavior and ecology exhibited by different vector species promote major limitations for adopting a single large‐scale vector control initiative, corroborating the need for developing integrative vector management approaches in such places.…”

Plasmodium yoelii nigeriensis (N67) Is a Robust Animal Model to Study Malaria Transmission by South American Anopheline Mosquitoes

“…aquasalis is an important vector of P . vivax malaria in Brazil (reviewed by [8]) and Guyana [27], our findings indicate that this mosquito species is not a competent vector of P . falciparum malaria with the two different lines tested.…”

“…albimanus are the only two long-term colonized Central and South American malaria vectors maintained in laboratories that have been used for experimental infections mostly by feeding them on blood of patients from endemic regions infected with P . vivax , demonstrating that they can be good models to study the interaction of American vectors with Plasmodium species [8]. More recently, An .…”

Increasingly inbred and fragmented populations ofPlasmodium vivaxwith declining transmission

“…Malaysia (Abdullah et al 2013), can be explained by multiple independent introductions of the parasite (Taylor et al 2013), historically low P. vivax transmission (Delgado-Ratto et al 2016;Van den Eede et al 2010,), non-overlapping vector species refractory to non-autochthonous P. vivax strains (Pimenta et al 2015) and historically focal transmission combined with recent reductions due to control (Abdullah et al 2013). In regions with past hyperendemic P. vivax transmission and recent upscaling of malaria control efforts, population structure has not been observed (Noviyanti et al 2015).…”