Ricerc@Sapienza

Hematophagous arthropods during feeding inject into their hosts a cocktail of salivary proteins whose main role is to allow for an effective blood meal by counteracting host hemostasis, inflammation and immunity. However, saliva of blood feeders also evokes in vertebrates an antibody response that can be used to evaluate exposure to disease vectors.

Sensitive techniques for the detection of Plasmodium (Aconoidasida: Plasmodiidae) sporozoites in field-collected malaria vectors are essential for the correct assessment of risk for malaria transmission. A real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) protocol targeting Plasmodium mtDNA proved to be much more sensitive in detecting sporozoites in mosquitoes than the widely used enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay targeting Plasmodium circumsporozoite protein (CSP-ELISA).