Figure 5
The susceptibility of red blood cells to infection is reduced in acutely infected mice.
Uninfected recipient and donor cells can both be infected by merozoites released from a rupturing donor parasite. The percentage of donor (fluorescently labelled RBCs) and recipient (endogenous) RBCs that are infected with GFPpos PbA parasites 48 hours after donor red blood cells were transfused in (a) naïve and (b) acutely infected mice. The red line indicates the median for each group of mice (n = 5), the blue box provides the 25th and 75th percentiles and the bars indicate the range of values. We see a very high preference for infection in endogenous (recipient) RBCs in naïve mice over the donor RBCs and low infection of endogenous and donor RBCs alike, in the acutely infected mice. We note that there is a lower percentage of donor RBCs infected with GFPpos PbA parasites in the acutely infected mice compared to the naïve mice. This is due to the increased parasite clearance in acutely infected mice. Further, the percentage of endogenous RBCs infected in acutely infected mice is lower than the donor RBCs, suggesting that there is some reduced susceptibility of the endogenous cells to invasion.
