Seeding blood-stage parasitaemia with infected red blood cells (iRBC) to obtain an estimate of blood-stage growth rate by non-linear curve fitting.

Dilution series of PvCSP-210/PvTRAP transgenic P. berghei iRBC were intravenously injected into 6–8 week old BALB/c mice (n = 34) and time to 1% blood stage parasitaemia inferred by linear regression from daily thin blood smears. Curve-fitting to the equation was performed using Prism to obtain a value for the growth rate g where M is the number of iRBC injected, T time-to-1% in the challenged mouse, and B the average number of RBC in a 22 g BALB/c mouse. A value of g = 3.50 ± 0.12 (SEM) was obtained.