This notice corrects aspects of a PLOS Medicine article that evaluated splenic accumulation and colocalization of immature reticulocytes and Plasmodium vivax in asymptomatic malaria using material from a prospective human splenectomy study. The corrected record clarifies that the expanded cohort reported in the PLOS Medicine paper comprised 22 patients, and that data from 15 of those patients had been reported previously in an earlier 2021 publication cited in the PLOS Medicine article.
The correction addresses two issues: an image in Fig 1a that partially overlaps with a previously published representative tissue section, and an incorrect Data Availability statement in the original article.
An overlap was identified between the upper left-hand panel of Fig 1a in the PLOS Medicine article and the left-hand panel of Fig 1B in the previously published 2021 article (published by the Massachusetts Medical Society). When the PLOS Medicine panel is flipped horizontally and rotated 90°, it is a partially overlapping image of the same representative tissue section shown in the earlier work.
Because the image in the earlier 2021 publication is not offered under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, that previously published material cannot be included under the PLOS Medicine article’s CC BY license. The correction therefore excludes the upper left-hand panel of Fig 1a from the article’s CC BY license, to reflect that the panel reports material from the earlier publication.
This clarification is limited to the provenance and licensing status of the specific panel; it does not alter the remainder of the article’s figures or the licensing of other content that is original to the PLOS Medicine publication.
The authors and the journal state explicitly that this image provenance clarification does not affect the study’s results, conclusions, or the overall scientific understanding reported in the PLOS Medicine article. The correction is presented as a clarification of figure sourcing and licensing rather than a change to data, analyses, or inferences.
Readers should interpret the correction as an update on the source and licensing of one representative image panel, while the underlying experimental findings—concerning splenic accumulation and colocalization of immature reticulocytes and Plasmodium vivax—remain as reported in the original article.
The original Data Availability statement in the PLOS Medicine article was incorrect. The correct Data Availability statement provided in this correction indicates that all relevant data are available within the manuscript, its Supporting Information files, and in an online repository. The repository DOI is provided as:
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.32332452
Researchers seeking the datasets referenced by the PLOS Medicine article should use the figshare repository linked above in addition to consulting the manuscript and supporting files. The correction explicitly directs readers to these locations as the complete source of relevant study data.
The correction cites the PLOS Medicine article it pertains to and the related 2021 publication that reported the earlier patient data and the overlapping image. The two references listed in the correction are:
Kho S, Qotrunnada L, Leonardo L, Andries B, Wardani PAI, Fricot A, et al. Evaluation of splenic accumulation and colocalization of immature reticulocytes and Plasmodium vivax in asymptomatic malaria: A prospective human splenectomy study. PLoS Med. 2021;18(5):e1003632.
Kho S, Qotrunnada L, Leonardo L, Andries B, Wardani PAI, Fricot A, et al. Hidden Biomass of Intact Malaria Parasites in the Human Spleen. N Engl J Med. 2021;384(21):2067–9.
Correction publication details are provided in the notice: the correction was published September 22, 2026, and the correction DOI is 10.1371/journal.pmed.1005254. The correction states that the image panel from the 2021 Massachusetts Medical Society publication is not available under CC BY and therefore excluded from the PLOS Medicine article’s CC BY license.
If readers need the primary data or wish to verify figure provenance, they should consult the corrected Data Availability locations given above and the cited original publications for full context.