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Fig. 6 | Malaria Journal

Fig. 6

From: Quantifying the removal of red blood cells in Macaca mulatta during a Plasmodium coatneyi infection

Fig. 6

Model simulations comparing cases of no infection, infection alone, and infection with removal of uninfected RBCs and up-regulation of erythropoiesis. Simulation of a healthy, non-infected macaque is shown as a blue line. In a healthy macaque, biotinylated RBCs are only slowly lost due to senescence and age-independent processes, while erythropoiesis compensates the loss by producing unlabelled RBCs in such a way that no significant change in haemoglobin is seen. Simulation of an infected macaque, without taking into account loss of uninfected RBCs, is shown as a red line. Relative to the healthy macaque, only a small number of biotinylated and unlabelled RBCs are removed by parasitization (mainly at around days 8–10) and infected RBCs are produced. These results do not match the experimental results (circles) for haemoglobin and biotinylated RBCs. However, if an infected macaque is simulated taking into account loss of uninfected RBCs and up-regulation of erythropoiesis green line, then these processes can be estimated such that the model captures the behavior of the experimental data (circles) obtained for that particular animal

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