Global occurrence of Plasmodium vivax-like human malaria parasite

A Plasmodium vivax-like human malaria parasite was recently identified from Madang, a holoendemic malarious region in Papua New Guinea. The complete nucleotide sequence of the circumsporozoite (CS) protein gene of this parasite is presented here. The CS protein of this parasite has an 11-mer repeat sequence and is different from the other known CS protein genes of human malaria parasites. However, it is identical to the CS protein gene of a monkey malaria parasite, Plasmodium simiovale. This P. vivax-like malaria parasite was found in Sepik, another malarious region of Papua New Guinea, and in Brazil, Indonesia, and Madagascar. No pure isolate of this parasite was identified. Specific oligonucleotide probes were used to determine relative proportion of the P. vivax-like parasite in P. vivax (type 1 and type 2) mixed field isolates. Compared with P. vivax or Plasmodium falciparum, the circumsporozoite protein of P. vivax-like parasites showed markedly less polymorphism.