Figure 5

ELISA-based measurement of serum proteins in different parasitemic vivax malaria patients. (A) Measurement of serum levels of different proteins in healthy controls (n = 40) and low and moderately-high parasitemic vivax malaria patients (LPVM (n = 23) and MPVM (n = 40)) by ELISA. SAA exhibited a steady increase (p < 0.05) in its serum abundance, whereas the serum levels of HP and ApoA1 were found to be sequentially decreased (p < 0.05) with respect to the increase in parasite count. **Indicates p < 0.001, *indicates 0.001 < p < 0.05, and NS indicates p > 0.05 based on a Mann-Whitney test. (B) Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves for evaluation of the sensitivity and specificity of different serum proteins for LPVM (red lines) and MPVM (blue lines). ROC curves demonstrating that SAA, Apo A1 and HP can predict vivax malaria efficiently (AUC > 0.80) even at a low-parasitemic level. (C) Correlation analysis between parasitemia and concentration of different serum proteins in combined groups consists of both LPVM and MPVM patients. Serum levels of SAA and HP exhibited substantial correlation with parasitic count in malaria patients (r > 0.6).