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Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 77(6), 2007, pp. 1043-1050
Copyright © 2007 by The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

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Plasmodium falciparum Genetic Diversity in Western Kenya Highlands

Daibin Zhong*, Yaw Afrane, Andrew Githeko, Zhaoqing Yang, Liwang Cui, David M. Menge, Emmanuel A. Temu, AND Guiyun Yan
Program in Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of California, Irvine, California; Centre for Global Health Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute, Kisumu, Kenya; Department of Parasitology, Kunming Medical College, Kunming, Yunnan, People’s Republic of China; Department of Entomology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania; Center for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Translational Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; The Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki-shi, Japan

The present study examined the genetic diversity and population structure of Plasmodium falciparum in western Kenya by analyzing the polymorphism of 12 microsatellite loci and two antigen loci. Malaria in highland areas is unstable and epidemic whereas malaria in lowland areas is endemic. Transmission intensity and malaria prevalence are substantially lower in the highlands than in the lowlands. Despite that the highland parasite populations exhibited reduced number of alleles, lower expected heterozygosity, and infection complexity in comparison to the surrounding lowland population, genetic diversity of the highland populations remained high in comparison to parasites from other meso-endemic regions. More than 70% of infections from western Kenya highland study sites were mixed genotype infections. Small but statistically significant genetic differentiation between highland and lowland populations was detected. These findings are discussed in the context of human travel and local transmission in the study area.

Received May 2, 2007. Accepted for publication August 23, 2007.

Acknowledgments: This study is published with the permission of the Director of the Kenya Medical Research Institute. We thank Claire Garro, Hong Chen, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions on the manuscript.

Financial support: This work was supported by grants R01 A150243, D43 TW01505, and R03 TW007360 from the National Institutes of Health.

* Address correspondence to Daibin Zhong, Program in Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697. E-mail: dzhong{at}uci.edu

Author’s addresses: Daibin Zhong and Guiyun Yan, Program in Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697. Yaw Afrane and Andrew Githeko, Centre for Global Health Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute, Kisumu, Kenya. Zhaoqing Yang, Department of Parasitology, Kunming Medical College, Kunming 650031, Yunnan, People’s Republic of China. Liwang Cui, Department of Entomology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802. David M. Menge, Center for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Translational Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455. Emmanuel A. Temu, The Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki-shi 852-8523, Japan.

Reprint requests: Daibin Zhong, Program in Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, E-mail: dzhong{at}uci.edu.






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Copyright © 2007 by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.