Figure 1

Telomere length and P. falciparum parasite densities before, during and after a controlled human malaria infection (CHMI). (A) Telomere length dynamics in kilobase pairs (kb) on respective study days of malaria infection. Arrows indicate the study time point prior infection (C-1, base line sample), day post treatment (DT+1), and time of end treatment/end of study (C+64). (B) Log values of P. falciparum parasite density (Pf/mL blood) during malaria infection. Peak parasite density was observed during day 11–12, and ranged from 2435 to 197,500 Pf/mL (median 22,092 Pf/mL), corresponding to 0.000062–0.0049% infected red blood cells (iRBC; median 0.00055%). Solid blue and orange lines represent predicted means, with black dots representing the detected mean value at each time point. Error bars denote the 95% CI of the mean. (C) Relationship between telomere length (kb) and parasite density (log values) during malaria infection. Solid blue line represents predicted mean of telomere length, solid orange line represents predicted mean of parasite, with shaded areas denoting the confidence of the mean, (N = 16, observations _TL = 481, observations _parsitaemia = 278).