Writing Resources
Malaria is fatal infectious disease that harms people all around the world mainly in tropical Saharan locations The risk of malaria increase with the climate change and changes in land such as through logging road-building mining and agricultural irrigation project The disease can be contracted from the bite of a female anopheles mosquito infected with the plasmodium parasite Out of plethora of plasmodium parasites only 5 cause the disease in humans falciparum vivax malaria ovale and knowlesi After being bite by the plasmodium infected mosquito tiny worm-like sporozoites leave the insects saliva and enter the humans bloodstream to infect red blood cells Minutes is all it takes for the sporozoites to reach the liver where they begin to mature by asexual reproduction and attack hepatic parenchymal cells In 1 2 weeks falciparum malaria and knowlesi change from sporozoites to merozoites as the host cells die while vivax and ovale take another route Taking a longer amount of time from months to years these diseases become hypnozoites and go dormant
This means instead of dividing right away they cause a delay from the time initially infected to experiencing the symptoms These diseases are generally not inside the red blood cells or asymptomatic Ovale invade red blood cells of all age and vivax invade young immature red blood cells Vivax also uses an erythrocyte surface receptor known as the Duffy antigen and those with sickle cell anemia protect against this disease as they don t the Duffy Other diseases like thalassemia and G6PD make the parasite more likely to die from oxidative stress Merozoites that have been released into the blood each bind to a surface receptor and invade a red blood cell Malariae prefers older red blood cells as does knowlesi and falciparum has no preference Once the merozoite is inside a red blood cell it asexually reproduces which is an ongoing process for 2 3 days The disease then goes into a series of transformation known as the erythrocytic phase
