An antigenic diversification threshold for falciparum malaria transmission at high endemicity
Fig 5
Rdiv predicts the response of incidence to reductions of the transmission rate.
(A) Interventions that push the system below the threshold are effective at stopping the accumulation of new genes, whereas those that do not, result in the rebound and rebuilding of diversity (A). Light and dark grey colors indicate genes that originate respectively before and after the intervention. Reductions of transmission rates would result in decreased Rdiv values (B) and increased (C) to different levels. (C) When Rdiv remains above 1, prevalence and Multiplicity of Infection (MOI) rebound relatively fast, whereas they do not recover when Rdiv drops below 1. Changes in these epidemiological quantities, prevalence and MOI, cannot per se indicate this transition, as they change continuously with different levels of intervention and do not exhibit a threshold.