Figure 3.

Ex-vivo assays of malaria growth in erythrocytes and sentinel bacteria growth in serum

Left panel in (A) shows growth rates of Plasmodium falciparum strain FCR3-FMG in fresh RBCs relative to growth in RBCs from non-anaemic controls. Right panel in (A) shows reticulocyte counts relative to non-anaemic controls. Black lines show mean values and error bars show SEs. Compared with day 0, parasite growth and reticulocyte counts were significantly higher at day 14 (p=0·0012) and day 49 (p=0·0014), with no differences between treatment groups. Upper section in (B) shows individual participant data. Black lines show mean values and error bars show SEs. Compared with day 0, faster growth rates were seen on day 14, day 49, and day 84, for all species (p<0·0001 for all times). Lower plots in (B) show the proportion of serum samples from participants in which ex-vivo growth rates were greater than the 95% percentile, calculated on day 0 across all groups. All organisms showed significant increases after iron supplementation (p=0·0090). No differences between study groups were noted. RBC=red blood cell. *p<0·0001. †p<0·0001. ‡p=0·0011.