Plasmodium vivax infection compromises reticulocyte stability

Martha A. Clark, Usheer Kanjee, Gabriel W. Rangel, Laura Chery, Anjali Mascarenhas, Edwin Gomes, Pradipsinh K. Rathod, Carlo Brugnara, Marcelo U. Ferreira and Manoj T. Duraisingh ()
Additional contact information
Martha A. Clark: Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Usheer Kanjee: Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Gabriel W. Rangel: Pennsylvania State University
Laura Chery: University of Washington
Anjali Mascarenhas: Goa Medical College
Edwin Gomes: Goa Medical College
Pradipsinh K. Rathod: University of Washington
Carlo Brugnara: Boston Children’s Hospital
Marcelo U. Ferreira: University of São Paulo
Manoj T. Duraisingh: Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract The structural integrity of the host red blood cell (RBC) is crucial for propagation of Plasmodium spp. during the disease-causing blood stage of malaria infection. To assess the stability of Plasmodium vivax-infected reticulocytes, we developed a flow cytometry-based assay to measure osmotic stability within characteristically heterogeneous reticulocyte and P. vivax-infected samples. We find that erythroid osmotic stability decreases during erythropoiesis and reticulocyte maturation. Of enucleated RBCs, young reticulocytes which are preferentially infected by P. vivax, are the most osmotically stable. P. vivax infection however decreases reticulocyte stability to levels close to those of RBC disorders that cause hemolytic anemia, and to a significantly greater degree than P. falciparum destabilizes normocytes. Finally, we find that P. vivax new permeability pathways contribute to the decreased osmotic stability of infected-reticulocytes. These results reveal a vulnerability of P. vivax-infected reticulocytes that could be manipulated to allow in vitro culture and develop novel therapeutics.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21886-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-21886-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21886-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().