Measuring changes inPlasmodium falciparumcensus population size in response to sequential malaria control interventions

Here we introduce a new endpoint “census population size” to evaluate the epidemiology and control ofPlasmodium falciparuminfections, where the parasite, rather than the infected human host, is the unit of measurement. To calculate census population size, we rely on a definition of parasite variation known as multiplicity of infection (MOI_var), based on the hyper-diversity of thevarmultigene family. We present a Bayesian approach to estimate MOI_varfrom sequencing and counting the number of unique DBLα tags (or DBLα types) ofvargenes, and derive from it census population size by summation of MOI_varin the human population. We track changes in this parasite population size and structure through sequential malaria interventions by indoor residual spraying (IRS) and seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) from 2012 to 2017 in an area of high-seasonal malaria transmission in northern Ghana. Following IRS, which reduced transmission intensity by > 90% and decreased parasite prevalence by ∼40-50%, significant reductions invardiversity, MOI_var, and population size were observed in ∼2,000 humans across all ages. These changes, consistent with the loss of diverse parasite genomes, were short lived and 32-months after IRS was discontinued and SMC was introduced,vardiversity and population size rebounded in all age groups except for the younger children (1-5 years) targeted by SMC. Despite major perturbations from IRS and SMC interventions, the parasite population remained very large and retained thevarpopulation genetic characteristics of a high-transmission system (highvardiversity; lowvarrepertoire similarity) demonstrating the resilience ofP. falciparumto short-term interventions in high-burden countries of sub-Saharan Africa.