Ex-vivo short-term culture and developmental assessment of Plasmodium vivax.

Abstract
A simple reproducible method for short-term ex-vivo Plasmodium vivax culture is presented in which glucose, ascorbic acid, thiamine, hypoxanthine, and 50% human AB+ serum are added to the standard P. falciparum in-vitro culture medium. Culture of freshly obtained blood samples from patients with acute vivax malaria with >0·5% parasitaemia resulted in >95% complete schizogony. Culture could be continued for 5–6 cycles without the addition of red cells. Criteria for staging the erythrocytic development of P. vivax in the first schizogonic cycle based on synchronous ex-vivo culture are presented. The asexual cycle was divided into 7 morphological stages: tiny ring (0–6 h), small ring (6–12 h), large ring (12–18 h), early trophozoite (18–28 h), late trophozoite (28–36 h), early schizont (36–42 h) and mature schizont (42–48 h). This simple method of culturing P. vivax ex vivo is suitable for antimalarial susceptibility and immunoparasitology studies.

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