Fig. 3

Effects of asexual parasite density and template copy number on C_t values. C_t values for smear-positive samples decreased as asexual parasite densities and template copy numbers increased (p < 0.001). Mean C_t values and standard deviations are grouped by their mean parasite densities and ranges of: 100 (≤ 200), 600 (201–999), 1500 (1000–1999) and 3500 (2000–5000) per μl. Note that the regression lines for the parasite DNA standards (Figs. 1, 2) were steeper than those for the filter paper blots (Fig. 3), consistent with DNA concentrations from 1000-fold (10⁺³) to 10,000- fold (10⁺⁴) for the DNA standards vs. 200-fold (10^+2.3) for the filter paper blots