I still remember the first time a batch of field-collected blood arrived at the lab looking perfectly fine, and turned out to be completely useless. Nobody had told the courier that malaria parasites care, quite a lot, about temperature. So let's fix that gap. If you're planning to collect P. falciparum infected blood in the field, the very first decision you need to make isn't about equipment or anticoagulant. It's about what you're trying to preserve, because asexual parasites and gametocytes want opposite conditions.
If you want asexual ring stages: keep it cold
Collect into ACD or CPD vacutainers rather than heparin, which can interfere with downstream processing and invasion assays (Thiam et al., 2022). Then refrigerate the tubes at 4°C, or pack them in a cooler with cold packs, making sure the tubes never touch the ice directly. Direct contact freezes the red cells locally and kills the parasites instantly. You have a window here, but it's not a generous one. Aim to process within 2 to 6 hours, since viability drops off once whole blood sits at 4°C for more than a day or two (Okitwi et al., 2022).
If you want gametocytes: never refrigerate
This one trips people up because it goes against instinct. Cold blood feels like careful, responsible blood. But cooling activates gametocytes prematurely and wrecks their infectivity before they ever reach a mosquito. Instead, keep the sample near body temperature, somewhere around 35.5°C, using something as simple as a thermos flask filled with warm water. Soumare and colleagues (2021) tested exactly this approach across sites in Burkina Faso and The Gambia and found that gametocyte infectivity held up for up to four hours stored this way. Four hours is your practical ceiling, so plan your transport route with that in mind.
If the lab is more than a day away: cryopreserve on site
Sometimes neither option above is realistic. If you're looking at more than 24 hours before the sample reaches a facility, don't transport it raw at all. Centrifuge in the field to remove the plasma, add a glycerol-based cryoprotectant like Glycerolyte 57 dropwise to the packed red cell pellet, then move the aliquoted vials into a portable liquid nitrogen dry shipper or dry ice. Stanisic et al. (2015) used cryopreservation to build clinical-grade P. falciparum cell banks this way, and the same principle scales down to a single field sample.
The thread running through all three options is the same: decide what you need before you collect, not after. A tube of blood that's been babied at exactly the wrong temperature is no better than one left in the sun.
Related Content
ACD-A Blood Collection Tubes for P. falciparum Culture: https://adwoabiotech.blogspot.com/2026/07/acd-blood-collection-tubes-for-p.html
RBC Isolation for Plasmodium falciparum culture: https://adwoabiotech.blogspot.com/2026/04/rbc-isolation-plasmodium-falciparum-culture%20.html
Calculating Haematocrit when Passaging Plasmodium falciparum Cultures: https://adwoabiotech.blogspot.com/2025/06/how-to-calculate-hematocrit-for-malaria.html
References
Okitwi, M., Orena, S., Katairo, T., Tumwebaze, P. K., Byaruhanga, O., Nsobya, S. L., Conrad, M. D., Bayles, B. R., Rosenthal, P. J., & Cooper, R. A. (2022). Impact of short-term storage on ex vivo antimalarial susceptibilities of fresh Ugandan Plasmodium falciparum isolates. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 66(4), e01437-21.
Soumare, H. M., Guelbeogo, W. M., van de Vegte-Bolmer, M., van Gemert, G. J., Soumanaba, Z., Ouedraogo, A., Ouattara, M. S., Abdullahi, A., Jadama, L., Camara, M. M., Gaye, P. M., Mendy, M., Davis, N., Tiono, A. B., D'Alessandro, U., Drakeley, C., Bousema, T., Moreno, M., & Collins, K. A. (2021). Maintaining Plasmodium falciparum gametocyte infectivity during blood collection and transport for mosquito feeding assays in the field. Malaria Journal, 20, 191.
Stanisic, D. I., Liu, X. Q., De, S. L., Batzloff, M. R., Forbes, T., Davis, C. B., Sekuloski, S., Chavchich, M., Chung, W., Trenholme, K., McCarthy, J. S., Li, T., Sim, B. K. L., Hoffman, S. L., & Good, M. F. (2015). Development of cultured Plasmodium falciparum blood-stage malaria cell banks for early phase in vivo clinical trial assessment of anti-malaria drugs and vaccines. Malaria Journal, 14, 143.
Thiam, L. G., Ansah, F., Niang, M., Awandare, G. A., & Aniweh, Y. (2022). Short-term cryopreservation and thawing have minimal effects on Plasmodium falciparum ex vivo invasion profile. Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, 12, 997418.
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