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REVIEW article

Front. Epidemiol.
Sec. Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fepid.2025.1490141
This article is part of the Research Topic Advanced Genetic and Genomic Methods and Applications for Malaria Surveillance View all 5 articles

Detecting imported malaria infections in endemic settings using molecular surveillance: current state and challenges

Provisionally accepted
Mahdi Safarpour Mahdi Safarpour 1Luis Cabrera Sosa Luis Cabrera Sosa 1,2,3Dionicia Gamboa Dionicia Gamboa 2,3Jean-Pierre Van Geertruyden Jean-Pierre Van Geertruyden 1Christopher Delgado-Ratto Christopher Delgado-Ratto 1*
  • 1 Department Family Medicine and Population Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
  • 2 Faculty of Sciences and Engineering, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru
  • 3 Institute of Tropical Medicine Alexander Von Humboldt, Peruvian University Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016-2030 targets eliminating malaria from at least 35 countries and reducing case incidence by 90% globally. The importation of parasites due to human mobilization poses a significant obstacle to achieve malaria elimination as it can undermine the effectiveness of local interventions. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of parasite importation is essential to support control efforts and advance progress toward elimination. Parasite genetic data is widely used to investigate the spatial and temporal dynamics of imported infections. In this context, this systematic review aimed to aggregate evidence on the application of parasite genetic data for mapping imported malaria and the analytical methods used to analyze it. We discuss the advantages and limitations of the genetic approaches employed and propose a suitable type of genetic data along with an statistical analytical framework to discriminate imported malaria infections from local infections. The findings offer potential actionable insights for national control programs, enabling them select the most effective methods for detecting imported cases while supporting the evaluation of elimination program performance, particularly in low transmission settings. This also may aid in the evaluation and refinement of elimination programs by identifying high-risk areas and enabling the targeted allocation of resources to these regions.

    Keywords: malaria elimination, Metapopulation, Population Genetics, travel-acquired malaria, Genomic surveillance

    Received: 02 Sep 2024; Accepted: 22 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Safarpour, Cabrera Sosa, Gamboa, Van Geertruyden and Delgado-Ratto. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Christopher Delgado-Ratto, Department Family Medicine and Population Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, 2610, Antwerp, Belgium

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.