Malaria Is A Universal Contagious Disease

Malaria infection is caused by parasitic protozoan plasmodium. Several species of malaria parasites exist but the most fatal known is plasmodium falciparum. It enters the liver and replicates itself by getting into the red blood cell and ripping its way out when fully matured. It was once thought that the US military got close to completely eradicating the vector mosquito through DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and the parasitic plasmodium with vaccines until they discovered that both are capable of mutating and gained the ability to be resistant to any chemicals scientists could produce (Horizon, 2005).

Malaria is blood disease caused by a parasite called Plasmodium. This disease occurs widely in poor, subtropical and tropical regions of the world. One subtropical region that has been greatly affected by this disease is Sub-Saharan Africa. According to Olowookere, Adeleke, Kuteyi, and Mbakwe (2013) malaria is one of the leading causes of death and illness in sub-Saharan Africa. It is important to be aware of the impacts this disease carries and how it has greatly affected millions of people. This paper will explain the impacts of Malaria and discuss, compare, and contrast the malaria research conducted by various researchers and reflect on the issue.

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.

While the mosquito is feeding, the parasite is injected with the saliva of the mosquito. “The parasite first undergoes a round of merogony in the liver followed by multiple rounds of merogony in the erythrocytes” (CDC, 2015). Which means that an asexual process has begun that will increase the number of infected cells by multiple cell divisions. The life cycle will contain other parasites that are characterized by sexual replication and also the formation of the invasive stages. (Wiser, 2011) The cycle begins with the liver Stage. The human infection begins when the

After several asexual cycles, the merozoites repeat the process of erythrocyte invasion and instead of replicating; they develop into the sexual form of the parasite known as a gametocyte. The male and female gametocytes require the female Anopheles mosquito to become sporozoites. If an uninfected female Anopheles mosquito bites an infected human host, it will suck up and digest both the male and female gametocytes, allowing them to develop into mature sex cells called gametes. From this stage in the cycle, these gametes enter

This new merozoites can cause multiple symptoms of malaria once they exit the erythrocytes. A handful of merozoites can become another type of cell, known as a gametophyte. A gametophyte is the next step toward allowing a mosquito to reproduce; therefore, if this human host is bitten by yet another mosquito, this mosquito will absorb the plasmodium parasite and the gametophytes associated with the parasite in its saliva. Inside of the mosquito, the gametocytes will produce male and female gametes (egg and sperm). Once these gametes are formed, fertilization of the egg by the sperm can occur, producing a zygote within the mosquito. This zygote can develop what is known as an oocyst, which fills with numbers of new sporozoites. These sporozoites can restart the cycle by moving into the mosquito’s saliva, and the mosquito can bite another human, and so on. I retrieved information about the life cycle from our textbook, Campbell Biology (Reece, Campbell, 2011, p. 599).

3 separate groups of mosquitos which carried the parasite which caused malaria. One of the groups was sprayed with the fungus, another group sprayed with the wild type fungus and the last group weren’t altered.

The plasmodium parasite, the causative agent of malaria lives a complex life cycle in two evolutionary diversion hosts and begins with the inoculation of sporozoites against the skin barrier(Figure 1). Sporozoites pass into the salivary glands of the mosquito and and are the infecting agent of the human host when the insect next feeds on human blood and into the skin of the host differentiate into the liver (Menard., 2001).

Malaria is a fever based disease caused by a microscopic parasite that is carried by a vector mosquito. An estimated 247 million cases of malaria occur annually and result in about 1-3 million deaths per year, majority of which are children under the age of 5 (1). In 2010, Malaria caused an estimated 219 (range 154–289) million cases and 660 000 (range 490 000–836 000) deaths of which 80% of the cases and 90% of the deaths were from Africa while the rest were in the South-East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean Regions (2). Plasmodium which is the disease causing organism (DCO) is a genus of a parasitic protozoon in the phylum apicomplexa. This parasite has 2 hosts; a mosquito vector, which is also its definitive host and a vertebrate host, in this case a human which is their intermediate host. Five species of Plasmodium cause malaria in humans: P. vivax, P. malariae, P. ovale, P. falciparum, and the zoonotic monkey malaria parasite P. knowlesi. Of these, P. falciparum causes severe morbidity and mortality mainly in sub-Saharan Africa (2). The plasmodium parasite is transmitted by a female

About 3.3 billion people, that is about half of the world’s population are at risk of contracting malaria (figure 1). Every year there are 250 million cases of malaria, and nearly 1 million deaths. That amounts to 2,732 deaths per day. Out of those million people that die every year, 800,000 of them are African children under the age of 5. To control malaria three actions need to be taken: insecticides need to be used to decrease the vector population, people have to be educated as to how to prevent the vector from reproducing, and anti-malarial drugs need to be distributed. To understand the vector and what the vector is, scientists had to first discover what the parasite was and how it worked. It was not until the year 1880 that French Physician Charles Laveran discovered that Malaria was caused by a protozoan in the genus Plasmodium (Malaria, 2013)

Malaria it is caused by parasitic protozoans which target and attack blood cells to reproduce and spread. Symptoms that occur because of attacks include high fevers, headache, nausea, vomiting, and muscle and joint pains. These symptoms can be especially dangerous for pregnant women and young children who are experiencing the disease for the first time. Severe malaria can cause lifelong intellectual disabilities in children.

It can also stick to tissues in various organs such as the brain or lungs. It can cause cerebral malaria which is often fatal (MVI, 2015). Malaria is spread by the Anopheles mosquitoes. When the mosquito bites an infected person, it takes in a small amount of blood that is infected with the malaria causing microbes. The mosquito carries the microbe and transmits it by biting another person and injects saliva into their skin. The microbes then begin the process of spreading and infecting that individual (CDC, 2015). In areas where mosquitoes have longer life spans, the transmission of the disease is more intense. The longer life span gives the parasite more time to develop.

There is only one way a person can acquire malaria, and that is through a mosquito bite. The mosquito that can spread malaria has to be of a certain genus and gender. The type that transmits malaria is an Anopheles mosquito. This kind of mosquito is the only one who can affect humans because anopheles obtain a parasite when taking in the blood of an affected person. This parasite is called a Plasmodium, and it grows inside of the mosquito until it reaches its fullest potential. When this occurs, the mosquito can then infect a person. Also, only female anopheles mosquitoes can transmit malaria. This is because females need blood to gather nutrients that are necessary to make their eggs, and the males do not need to do this. In order for a person to attain malaria there is a certain process that occurs. The first step is that a mosquito bites a person who is already affected with malaria. Because of this the mosquito now contains malaria and can further transmit it to other humans.

The mechanism of Malaria is from a Plasmodium parasite, that originate in female Anopheles mosquitoes, that can spread into humans from the bites of the infected mosquitoes (Mohandas & An, 2012). Among the “Plasmodia species… only 4 of the over 100 species of plasmodia are infectious to humans. The majority of cases and almost all deaths are caused by Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax,

The aim of this study is to find out the prevalence of neurological manifestations of falciparum malaria and the outcome of falciparum malaria in general and of neurological involvement of falciparum malaria in particular.