A Brief Note On The Disease Of Malaria

Malaria has been in existence for thousands of years. Many historical records show that it has affected human civilization greatly by plaguing and causing mass death. The earliest record can be traced back to 2700 BC in China (Cox, 2002). It has been long associated with swamps and insects for hundreds of years but often believed to be the air from swamps causing the plague. The term malaria rooted from two Italian words ‘mala’ and ‘aria’ which literally means bad air. Humanity did not know the true nature of the long thought disease until 1894 when a Scottish physician, Sir Ronald Ross, discovered that it was actually the parasite in mosquito that is causing the malaria.

Mosquitoes pass malaria to humans through their salivary glands. Once the parasites have entered the blood stream, they go to the liver. In the liver they mature and undergo reproduction, forming merozoites. These merozoites enter the blood stream and inject themselves into red blood cells. Once inside the blood cells, they reproduce rapidly and within forty-eight to seventy-two hours, the blood cell bursts, releasing hemoglobin into the blood stream. It is the destruction of these blood cells and the hemoglobin released into the blood stream that actually causes most of the symptoms.

Malaria or other similar diseases like malaria has been recognized and encountered by humans for more than 4,000 years. Malaria is caused by the genus Plasmodium parasites, which enter the human body and are transmitted to people through the bite of a mosquito infected with the parasite (Q&A, Malaria). Once the parasite enters the human body, the parasites multiply in the liver and then infect red blood cells. The malaria parasite was first discovered on November 6, 1880, by a French army surgeon named Charles Louis Al phonse Laveran. While stationed in

There are five types of mosquitos that can carry the disease; P. falciparum, P. Vivax, P. Ovale, P. Knowlesi, and P. Malariae (Marshall & Taylor, 2009). The two diseases that have the most focus are the P. vivax which is most widely contracted, and the P. Falciparum which is the most fatal (Center for Disease Control, 2017). The life cycle of the disease starts with the bite of a mosquito called the anopheles, which transmits the disease. While there are hundreds of different types of mosquitoes anopheles is the only one that carries the parasitic protozoa. The bite of a mosquito injects sporozoites into the blood stream where it travels quickly to the liver since they have a short life span (Frevert, 2004). Once at the liver it infects the liver cells and replicates itself to mature into schizonts which ruptures into merozoites. After replication the merozoites burst from the liver cells into the blood stream and begin to invade the erythrocytes (red blood cells), once in the erythrocytes they again replicate completely filling the cell until the parasite ruptures the erythrocytes and releases toxins and merozoites into the bloodstream. The parasites are then separated into gametocytes (male/female), where they are released by the blood stream as plasmodium which can be acquired from another anopheles mosquito by biting the human host to start the cycle

Malaria is considered the most important vector-borne infectious disease in the world, which is caused by a species of the Plasmodium parasite, and transmitted by female Anopheles spp mosquitoes.2,10,12

Malaria is a Vector borne disease that affects millions of people every year. It is responsible for over 600,000 deaths yearly. It has the highest infection rate in countries in Africa, this is due to the climate and health practices. It is carried to humans primarily through mosquitos who transfer between people when they bite them. In this way, the mosquito is the transport between two humans for the disease. The disease is transferred through blood and continues to the liver where it enters liver cells. From there it is put back into the blood in larger numbers and is carried around the body to hijack and shut down many different systems and functions. In this way it involves almost every system in the body. The

Plasmodium falciparium belongs to the family Plasmodidae and is one of four different Plasmodium species that infect humans (7). Plasmodium species are obligate intracellular parasitic protozoa that are unicellular, eukaryotic and chemoheterotrophic and as a result, need a host for nutrition and reproduction (5). Plasmodium falciparium along with Plasmodium malariae, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium vivax are usually seen as human parasites (10). P. falciparium is one of the two protozoan parasites that is responsible for most cases of malaria, the other being Plasmodium vivax (6). P. falciparium is usually found in the tropics and subtropics but has also spread to temperate zones (11). Blood smears are usually used to differentiate between the four species because at the blood stage, they tend to modify the host erythrocyte differently and exhibit differences in their morphology (6, 7). P. falciparium is usually characterized with young rings in the absence of mature rings and schizonts (9). These ring stages tend to be slightly smaller and more numerous than those of the other species. Other distinguishable characteristics of P. falciparum are its high level of parasitemia and its banana shaped gametocytes (7). The genome size of P. falciparum ranges between 1x107 and 4x108 base pairs and its cell cycle takes place in two stages: asexual and sexual (10).

Located in the Kingdom Protozoan Malaria is a parasitic mosquito born organism passed to humans by several species of the genus Anopheles and is responsible for about 220 million infections every year and 600,000- 1,200,000 deaths every year. The developing world is disproportionately affected which had led to some unique changes when dealing with infections such as drugs needing to be cheap, administered orally and stable at relatively high temperatures. However in keeping with the old saying prevention is better than cure many methods have been proposed and tested to control the mosquito vector that transmits malaria as supposed to treating the infect after it occurs.

There are currently five distinct protozoan vertebrate Plasmodium species identified as causal agents of malaria in humans: P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovalae, P. malariae, and P. knowlesi, with the most common, P. falciparum, accounting for approximately seventy percent of all cases. The female Anopheles gambiae is a vector for all plasmodia of malaria, as observed by Ronald Ross in 1897 (Nobel Media, 2014) , and acquires the Plasmodium by feeding on the blood of an already infected human. Subsequently, the Plasmodium multiplies, and migrates from the midgut of the insect to the oesophagus, ready to be regurgitated into the bloodstream when the mosquito obtains a blood meal from a human (NIH, 2017) . Ultimately, once inoculated by the

Malaria gets its name from “mal aria,” meaning bad air, because patients used to blame the sudden illness on the poor air quality of the nearby swamps. Scientists now know that malaria is a parasitic infection caused by a single-celled protozoan, Plasmodium. Of the four types of this parasite, Plasmodium falciparum is recognized as the most

There are four species in the Plasmodium Genus that affect humans: P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. malariae. What people did not know then, was how the protozoan got from

Female anopheles mosquitoes are actually the mode of transmission of the parasite to humans by biting. But for it to be effective in doing this transmission, the species need certain characteristics which may include:

The history of malaria is as long as recorded human history. The first known symptoms were

Around the world each year people died from Malaria, mainly in tropical and subtropical part of the world, there are five species of Plasmodium can cause disease in humans P. ovale, P. malariae, P. vivax, P. falciparum, and the primate species P. knowlesi. In previous reported WHO (2015) 215 million cases and 438 thousand dead by infection of P. falciparum, it is the strain most common and fatal mainly in Africa [1]. P. falciparum is capacity changes the red

Of the many diseases spread by insects, none are actually caused by the insects themselves but by other organisms passed on when they feed or bite. Insects are capable of spreading diseases caused by many different types of microorganisms including bacteria, viruses, protozoan and others. Mosquitoes have earned the title of "the most deadly creature on earth." This is due to the fact that they spread serious epidemic diseases such as Malaria, Yellow Fever, African Sleeping Sickness, and West Nile Virus.