<i>Plasmodium chabaudi adami</i> parasites preferentially infect RBCs that have not been conditioned by HE.

<p>At peak parasitemia (day 7 post-infection), whole blood was fixed in 1% paraformaldehyde overnight, washed, stained and analyse with confocal microscopy. The parasites were labeled with DAPI (blue), and distinction between saline/HE-treated RBCs (strep⁺) and RBCs generated after treatments (strep^-) was made by APC-conjugated streptavidin staining (red): reticulocytes were stained with FITC-labeled anti-CD71 antibody (green). DIC and fluorescence images were captured with Nikon A1 confocal microscope (plan Apo VC 60x, NA 1.4, λs oil immersion), and analysed with NIS-Elements Viewer 4.20 imaging software. Parasitemia within strep⁺ and strep^- RBCs (A; infected strep^+/- RBCs / total strep^+/- RBCs) and proportions of strep⁺ and strep^- RBCs charge with multiple ring (B; multiple infected strep^+/- RBCs / infected strep^+/- RBCs) were evaluated on >150 ring-iRBCs per mouse. DAPI, anti-CD71-FITC, streptavidin-APC fluorescence, DIC and merged channels are shown for a control and a HE-treated mouse (C). Data are the means ± SEM of one experiment (n = 4). All data from Ctrl and HE-treated mice were compared with an unpaired Student <i>t</i> test, **p<0.01, (Fig 5B; Ctrl strep^- vs HE strep^-, p = 0.0593).