Thomas Churcher

Imperial College London

The importance of parasite density in malaria transmission

[When and where]

Epidemiologists and mathematical modellers assume that malaria transmission is dependent on the number of infectious hosts or vectors and not on the quantity of parasites they harbor. However there is now an increasing body of evidence which shows that the parasite density is important in both human-to-mosquito and mosquito-to-human transmission. There is also an awareness that transmission is influenced by density-dependent processes, both positive (facilitating) and negative (restricting) which overall increase the resilience of the parasite to control interventions. In this talk we examine some of these processes and investigate how they will influence the effectiveness of pre-erythrocytic and transmission blocking malaria vaccines which are currently under development. The epidemiological importance of parasite density shall be assessed to see how it will change the way we measure transmission and target malaria elimination.

thomas.churcher@imperial.ac.uk

Invited talk Mini-symposium 1

Updated May 13, 2015, by Minus