What is the natural history of malaria?
The natural history of malaria involves cyclical infection of humans and female Anopheles mosquitoes. In humans, the parasites grow and multiply first in the liver cells and then in the red cells of the blood.
What is the brief history of malaria?
Malaria is an ancient disease and references to what was almost certainly malaria occur in a Chinese document from about 2700 BC, clay tablets from Mesopotamia from 2000 BC, Egyptian papyri from 1570 BC and Hindu texts as far back as the sixth century BC.
When was malaria first discovered?
Alphonse Laveran, a military doctor in France's Service de Santé des Armées (Health Service of the Armed Forces). The military hospital in Constantine (Algeria), where Laveran discovered the malaria parasite in 1880.
How did malaria originate?
Origin and prehistoric period The first evidence of malaria parasites was found in mosquitoes preserved in amber from the Palaeogene period that are approximately 30 million years old. Malaria protozoa are diversified into primate, rodent, bird, and reptile host lineages.
How was malaria first discovered?
On 20 August 1897, in Secunderabad, Ross made his landmark discovery. While dissecting the stomach tissue of an anopheline mosquito fed four days previously on a malarious patient, he found the malaria parasite and went on to prove the role of Anopheles mosquitoes in the transmission of malaria parasites in humans.
Why is it called malaria?
In fact, the word "malaria" actually derives from the Italian for "bad air"-- the mal'aria associated with marshes and swamps. A single-celled parasite known as a sporozoan causes malaria.
Is malaria a virus?
Malaria is a serious disease that spreads when you're bitten by a mosquito infected by tiny parasites. When it bites, the mosquito injects malaria parasites into your bloodstream. Malaria is caused by the parasites, not by a virus or by a type of bacterium.
How was malaria cured?
Vaccines. In mid-2015 the world's first malaria vaccine Mosquirix (also known as RTS,S) was given the green light for use against Plasmodium falciparum malaria in Africa. The vaccine works by preventing the malaria parasite from entering the liver where it can mature and multiply to cause disease symptoms.
How was malaria stopped?
Malaria transmission in the United States was eliminated in the early 1950s through the use of insecticides, drainage ditches and the incredible power of window screens. But the mosquito-borne disease has staged a comeback in American hospitals as travelers return from parts of the world where malaria runs rampant.
Is malaria Old World or New World?
Therefore, the most virulent human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, most likely entered the New World after European contact and was carried by Africans brought to the Americas between the mid-1500s and mid-1800s8 and settlers from the main colonizing nations, Portugal and Spain, where malaria was endemic at ...
Who discovered malaria cure?
The discovery of a potent antimalarial treatment by Youyou Tu of China, awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, is “one of the greatest examples of the century” of the translation of scientific discovery, according to malaria expert Dyann Wirth of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
How is malaria spread?
Malaria is spread by the bite of an infected femaleAnophelesmosquito. Malaria may also be spread by transfusion of blood from infected people or by the use of contaminated (dirty) needles or syringes. People with untreated or inadequately treated malaria may spread infection to a mosquito that bites them.
Overview
The history of malaria stretches from its prehistoric origin as a zoonotic disease in the primates of Africa through to the 21st century. A widespread and potentially lethal human infectious disease, at its peak malaria infested every continent, except Antarctica. Its prevention and treatment have been targeted in science and medicine for hundreds of years. Since the discovery of the Plasmodium parasites which cause it, research attention has focused on their biology and as wel…
Origin and prehistoric period
The first evidence of malaria parasites was found in mosquitoes preserved in amber from the Palaeogene period that are approximately 30 million years old. Malaria protozoa are diversified into primate, rodent, bird, and reptile host lineages. The DNA of Plasmodium falciparum shows the same pattern of diversity as its human hosts, with greater diversity in Africa than in the rest of t…
Classical period
Malaria became widely recognized in ancient Greece by the 4th century BC, and is implicated in the decline of many city-state populations. The term μίασμα (Greek for miasma): "stain, pollution", was coined by Hippocrates of Kos who used it to describe dangerous fumes from the ground that are transported by winds and can cause serious illnesses. Hippocrates (460–370 BC), the "father of medi…
Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, treatments for malaria (and other diseases) included blood-letting, inducing vomiting, limb amputations and trepanning. Physicians and surgeons in the period used herbal medicines like belladonna to bring about pain relief in afflicted patients.
The name malaria derived from mal aria ('bad air' in Medieval Italian). This idea came from the Ancient Romans who thought that this disease came from pestilential fumes in the swamps. Th…
Spread to the Americas
Malaria was not referenced in the "medical books" of the Mayans or Aztecs. European settlers and the West Africans they enslaved likely brought malaria to the Americas in the 16th century.
In the book 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, the author Charles Mann cites sources that speculate that the reason African slaves were brought to the British Americas was because of their resistance to malaria. The colonies needed low-paid agricultural labor, and larg…
19th century
In the nineteenth century, the first drugs were developed to treat malaria and parasites were first identified as its source.
French chemist Pierre Joseph Pelletier and French pharmacist Joseph Bienaimé Caventou separated in 1820 the alkaloids cinchonine and quinine from powdered fever tree bark, allowing for the creation of standardized doses of the active in…
20th century
Relapses were first noted in 1897 by William S. Thayer, who recounted the experiences of a physician who relapsed 21 months after leaving an endemic area. He proposed the existence of a tissue stage. Relapses were confirmed by Patrick Manson, who allowed infected Anopheles mosquitoes to feed on his eldest son. The younger Manson then described a relapse nine months after hi…
Further reading
• Packard RM (2007). The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria. Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease. JHU Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-8712-3.
• Shah S (2010). The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-374-23001-2. excerpt and text search
Overview
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. Symptoms usually begin ten to fifteen days after being bitten by an infected mosquito. If not properly treated, people may have recurrences of the disease months later. In those who have recently survived an infection, reinfection usually cause…
History
Although the parasite responsible for P. falciparum malaria has been in existence for 50,000–100,000 years, the population size of the parasite did not increase until about 10,000 years ago, concurrently with advances in agriculture and the development of human settlements. Close relatives of the human malaria parasites remain common in chimpanzees. Some evidence suggests that the P. falciparum malaria may have originated in gorillas.
Signs and symptoms
Adults with malaria tend to experience chills and fever – classically in periodic intense bouts lasting around six hours, followed by a period of sweating and fever relief – as well as headache, fatigue, abdominal discomfort, and muscle pain. Children tend to have more general symptoms: fever, cough, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Initial manifestations of the disease—common to all malaria species—are similar to flu-like symp…
Cause
Malaria is caused by infection with parasites in the genus Plasmodium. In humans, malaria is caused by six Plasmodium species: P. falciparum, P. malariae, P. ovale curtisi, P. ovale wallikeri, P. vivax and P. knowlesi. Among those infected, P. falciparum is the most common species identified (~75%) followed by P. vivax (~20%). Although P. falciparum traditionally accounts for the majority of deaths, recent evidence suggests that P. vivax malaria is associated with potentially life-threa…
Pathophysiology
Malaria infection develops via two phases: one that involves the liver (exoerythrocytic phase), and one that involves red blood cells, or erythrocytes (erythrocytic phase). When an infected mosquito pierces a person's skin to take a blood meal, sporozoites in the mosquito's saliva enter the bloodstream and migrate to the liver where they infect hepatocytes, multiplying asexually and asymptomatically for a period of 8–30 days.
Diagnosis
Due to the non-specific nature of malaria symptoms, diagnosis is typically suspected based on symptoms and travel history, then confirmed with a parasitological test. In areas where malaria is common, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends clinicians suspect malaria in any person who reports having fevers, or who has a current temperature above 37.5 °C without any other obvious cause. Malaria should similarly be suspected in children with signs of anemia: pal…
Prevention
Methods used to prevent malaria include medications, mosquito elimination and the prevention of bites. As of 2020, there is one vaccine for malaria (known as RTS,S) which is licensed for use. The presence of malaria in an area requires a combination of high human population density, high anopheles mosquito population density and high rates of transmission from humans to mosquitoes and from mosquitoes to humans. If any of these is lowered sufficiently, the parasit…
Treatment
Malaria is treated with antimalarial medications; the ones used depends on the type and severity of the disease. While medications against fever are commonly used, their effects on outcomes are not clear. Providing free antimalarial drugs to households may reduce childhood deaths when used appropriately. Programmes which presumptively treat all causes of fever with antimalarial drugs may lead to overuse of antimalarials and undertreat other causes of fever. Nevertheless, t…