Pv3Rs: Plasmodium vivax relapse, recrudescence, and reinfection statistical genetic inference

Abstract

A Plasmodium vivax recurrence can be caused by activation of dormant liver-stage hypnozoites (relapse), failure to successfully treat a blood-stage infection (recrudescence), or a new mosquito inoculation (reinfection) (Pv3Rs). Inference of the cause of recurrence is important, especially in clinical trials, where molecular correction is used to improve estimates of antimalarial treatment efficacy. Pv3Rs implements statistical inference of P. vivax recurrence states (recrudescence, relapse, reinfection) from P. vivax genetic data. Under various simplifying assumptions, we model genetic relationships between parasites within and across infections to compute the posterior probabilities of recurrence states. Pv3Rs is applicable to a variety of genetic data types, including length polymorphic loci and amplicon sequencing data.