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Life Cycle of Malaria | Human Hosts | Malaria Parasites | Anopheles Mosquitoes

Life Cycle of Malaria

In nature, malaria parasites spread by infecting successively two types of hosts: 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. In the blood, successive broods of parasites grow inside the red cells and destroy them, releasing daughter parasites ("merozoites") that continue the cycle by invading other red cells.

The blood stage parasites are those that cause the symptoms of malaria. When certain forms of blood stage parasites ("gametocytes") are picked up by a female Anopheles mosquito during a blood meal, they start another, different cycle of growth and multiplication in the mosquito.

After 10-18 days, the parasites are found (as "sporozoites") in the mosquito's salivary glands. When the Anopheles mosquito takes a blood meal on another human, the sporozoites are injected with the mosquito's saliva and start another human infection when they parasitize the liver cells.

Thus the mosquito carries the disease from one human to another (acting as a "vector"). Differently from the human host, the mosquito vector does not suffer from the presence of the parasites.

View Schema of the life cycle of malaria

Human Hosts

Humans infected with malaria parasites can develop a wide range of symptoms. These vary from asymptomatic infections (no apparent illness), to the classic symptoms of malaria (fever, chills, sweating, headaches, muscle pains), to severe complications (cerebral malaria, anemia, kidney failure) that can result in death. The severity of the symptoms depends on several factors, such as the species (type) of infecting parasite and the human's acquired immunity and genetic background.

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Malaria Parasites

Four species of malaria parasites can infect humans under natural conditions: Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale and P. malariae. The first two species cause the most infections worldwide. Plasmodium falciparum is the agent of severe, potentially fatal malaria, causing an estimated 700,000 - 2.7 million deaths annually, most of them in young children in Africa. Plasmodium vivax and P. ovale have dormant liver stage parasites ("hypnozoites") which can reactivate ("relapse") and cause malaria several months or years after the infecting mosquito bite. Plasmodium malariae produces long-lasting infections and if left untreated can persist asymptomatically in the human host for years, even a lifetime.

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Anopheles Mosquitoes

Malaria is transmitted among humans by female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. Female mosquitoes take blood meals to carry out egg production, and such blood meals are the link between the human and the mosquito hosts in the parasite life cycle. Of the approximately 430 known species of Anopheles, only 30-50 transmit malaria in nature. The successful development of the malaria parasite in the mosquito (from the "gametocyte" stage to the "sporozoite" stage) depends on several factors. The most important is ambient temperature and humidity (higher temperatures accelerate the parasite growth in the mosquito) and whether the Anopheles survives long enough to allow the parasite to complete its cycle in the mosquito host ("sporogonic" or "extrinsic" cycle, duration 10 to 18 days). Differently from the human host, the mosquito host does not suffer noticeably from the presence of the parasites.

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