Nineteen sequentially collected blood samples from a human volunteer who was experimentally infected with P. falciparum 3D7 were used for the validation of the quantitative PCR assays. This volunteer was a participant in a larger study of the in vivo efficacy of anti-malarial drug, to be described in more detail elsewhere [McCarthy et al, manuscript in preparation]. Briefly, a blood sample was taken pre-infection and then every 12 hours from Day 3 at 8 am, for 10 consecutive days. Anti-malarial treatment was administered on Day 7 at 8 pm, and two extra blood samples were collected post treatment at +6 and +18 hours). Following extraction of the parasite DNA in these samples, extracts were tested in triplicate to validate the rt-qPCR assays. Thick and thin blood film preparations were also used to monitor the volunteer's parasitaemia at each time point.
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