Plasmodium brasilianum

In 1908, a quartan malaria parasite was identified by Gonder and von Berenberg-Gossler in an imported bald uakari (Cacajao calvus) and named Plasmodium brasilianum, the quartan malaria parasite of New World monkeys in Latin America. It resembled the human quartan parasite Plasmodium malariae under the microscope, but early cross-species experimental infections by subcutaneous transfer of parasitized blood from black spider monkeys in the 1930s were unsuccessful. Hence, the names of two distinct parasites were maintained. As the two species have now been demonstrated to be genetically identical, it has been proposed that P. brasilianum be subsumed under the name P. malariae.[2]

The simian parasite Plasmodium brasilianum causes quartan fever in New World monkeys and resembles Plasmodium malariae morphologically.[2] Sequence analysis of circumsporozoite protein, merozoite surface protein-1, and small subunit ribosomal RNA of P. malariae and P. brasilianum showed that the two parasites were very closely related.[1] The similarity between 18S sequences from P. brasilianum and P. malariae is more than 99% differing only in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).[2] It is considered plausible that P. brasilianum in platyrrhines is a result of the cross-species transfer of P. malariae brought to the New World by settlers in the post-Columbus era.[1]

Plasmodium brasilianum naturally infects species of primates from all New World monkey families from a large geographic area in Central and South America.[3] The parasite has been found in Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and French Guiana.[4][2][5]

Natural infection of P. brasilianum has been found in tamarins and marmosets of the genera Callithrix, Leontopithecus and Mico in the Atlantic forest.[3] Naturally acquired infections in humans with parasites termed as P. brasilianum have been found among Yanomami indigenous communities of the Venezuelan Amazon.[2] Also Anopheles freeborni mosquitoes infected by feeding on a platyrrhine spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi geoffroyi) from Panama carrying P. brasilianum, have been shown to transmit the parasite through biting to five human volunteers.[1] Investigations in the 1960s demonstrated that humans could be experimentally infected with P. brasilianum from monkeys and vice versa.[2] In addition to humans, P. brasilianum has been transmissible experimentally to marmosets.[6]

• List of Plasmodium species infecting primates