PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Andreea Waltmann
AU  - Cristian Koepfli
AU  - Natacha Tessier
AU  - Stephan Karl
AU  - Abebe Fola
AU  - Andrew W Darcy
AU  - Lyndes Wini
AU  - G. L. Abby Harrison
AU  - Céline Barnadas
AU  - Charlie Jennison
AU  - Harin Karunajeewa
AU  - Sarah Boyd
AU  - Maxine Whittaker
AU  - James Kazura
AU  - Melanie Bahlo
AU  - Ivo Mueller
AU  - Alyssa E. Barry
TI  - Increasingly inbred and fragmented populations of <em>Plasmodium vivax</em> with declining transmission
AID  - 10.1101/100610
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 100610
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/23/100610.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/23/100610.full
AB  - The human malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax is resistant to malaria control strategies maintaining high genetic diversity even when transmission is low. To investigate whether declining P. vivax transmission leads to increasing P. vivax population structure that would facilitate elimination, we genotyped samples from a wide range of transmission intensities and spatial scales in the Southwest Pacific, including two time points at one site (Tetere, Solomon Islands) during intensified control. Analysis of 887 P. vivax microsatellite haplotypes from hyperendemic Papua New Guinea (PNG, n = 443), meso-hyperendemic Solomon Islands (n= 420), and hypoendemic Vanuatu (n=24) revealed increasing population structure and multilocus linkage disequilibrium and a modest decline in diversity as transmission decreases over space and time. In Solomon Islands, which has had sustained control efforts for 20 years, and Vanuatu, which has experienced sustained low transmission for many years, significant population structure was observed at different spatial scales. We conclude that control efforts will eventually impact P. vivax population structure and with sustained pressure, populations may eventually fragment into a limited number of clustered foci that could be targeted for elimination.