Abstract
Humans and African great apes (AGAs) are naturally infected with several species of closely related malaria parasites. The need to understand the origins of human malaria as well as the risk of zoonotic transmissions and emergence of new malaria strains in human populations has markedly encouraged research on great ape Plasmodium parasites. Progress in the use of non-invasive methods has rendered investigations into wild ape populations possible. Present knowledge is mainly focused on parasite diversity and phylogeny, with still large gaps to fill on malaria parasite ecology. Understanding what malaria infection means in terms of great ape health is also an important, but challenging avenue of research and has been subject to relatively few research efforts so far. This paper reviews current knowledge on African great ape malaria and identifies gaps and future research perspectives.
Highlights
African great apes (AGAs) have been known to naturally host malaria parasites since the early 1920s, when researchers first described various Plasmodium species infecting chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and gorillas (Gorilla spp.), which are closely related to those infecting humans (Reichenow, 1920)
To date, most of the knowledge on wild AGA malaria is concentrated around parasite diversity, distribution and phylogenetic relationships with malaria parasites infecting other species, humans in particular
The majority of research studies aim at identifying potential animal reservoirs with ongoing zoonotic transmission as well as assessing the risk of emergence of new malaria strains in human populations
Summary
African great apes (AGAs) have been known to naturally host malaria parasites since the early 1920s, when researchers first described various Plasmodium species infecting chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and gorillas (Gorilla spp.), which are closely related to those infecting humans (Reichenow, 1920). Recent broad-scale investigations based on the detection of malaria parasite DNA (mitochondrial, nuclear and apicoplast sequences) in faecal samples of wild AGA populations resulted in the genetic characterisation of a wide array of other Plasmodium species This showed that the entire diversity of human-derived P. falciparum sequences is encompassed by the gorilla P. praefalciparum clade (Liu et al, 2010; Sundararaman et al, 2013) and led to the substantial indication that P. falciparum originated from a relatively recent zoonotic transmission of P. praefalciparum from gorillas to humans (Liu et al, 2010). For P. malariaeand ovale-like parasites, larger-scale investigations of infections in wild NHPs together with phylogenetic analyses are still needed to clarify the evolutionary relationship of these parasites with human strains
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