A report on Malaria and Fever

Malaria parasite connecting to a red blood cell

An analog medical thermometer showing a temperature of 38.7 °C or 101.7 °F

"The Sick Girl", 1882, Statens Museum for Kunst

The life cycle of malaria parasites. Sporozoites are introduced by a mosquito bite. They migrate to the liver, where they multiply into thousands of merozoites. The merozoites infect red blood cells and replicate, infecting more and more red blood cells. Some parasites form gametocytes, which are taken up by a mosquito, continuing the life cycle.

Michael Ancher, "The Sick Girl", 1882, Statens Museum for Kunst

Micrograph of a placenta from a stillbirth due to maternal malaria. H&E stain. Red blood cells are anuclear; blue/black staining in bright red structures (red blood cells) indicate foreign nuclei from the parasites.

Different fever patterns observed in Plasmodium infections

Electron micrograph of a Plasmodium falciparum-infected red blood cell (center), illustrating adhesion protein "knobs"

Hyperthermia: Characterized on the left. Normal body temperature (thermoregulatory set point) is shown in green, while the hyperthermic temperature is shown in red. As can be seen, hyperthermia can be conceptualized as an increase above the thermoregulatory set point.
Hypothermia: Characterized in the center: Normal body temperature is shown in green, while the hypothermic temperature is shown in blue. As can be seen, hypothermia can be conceptualized as a decrease below the thermoregulatory set point.
Fever: Characterized on the right: Normal body temperature is shown in green. It reads "New Normal" because the thermoregulatory set point has risen. This has caused what was the normal body temperature (in blue) to be considered hypothermic.

The blood film is the gold standard for malaria diagnosis.

Ring-forms and gametocytes of Plasmodium falciparum in human blood

An Anopheles stephensi mosquito shortly after obtaining blood from a human (the droplet of blood is expelled as a surplus). This mosquito is a vector of malaria, and mosquito control is an effective way of reducing its incidence.

Man spraying kerosene oil in standing water, Panama Canal Zone, 1912

Walls where indoor residual spraying of DDT has been applied. The mosquitoes remain on the wall until they fall down dead on the floor.

An advertisement for quinine as a malaria treatment from 1927.

Deaths due to malaria per million persons in 2012

Past and current malaria prevalence in 2009

Ancient malaria oocysts preserved in Dominican amber

British doctor Ronald Ross received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on malaria.

Chinese medical researcher Tu Youyou received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2015 for her work on the antimalarial drug artemisinin.

Artemisia annua, source of the antimalarial drug artemisinin

U.S. Marines with malaria in a field hospital on Guadalcanal, October 1942

Members of the Malaria Commission of the League of Nations collecting larvae on the Danube delta, 1929

1962 Pakistani postage stamp promoting malaria eradication program

Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches.

- Malaria

This includes viral, bacterial, and parasitic infections—such as influenza, the common cold, meningitis, urinary tract infections, appendicitis, Lassa, COVID-19, and malaria.

- Fever

7 related topics with Alpha

Plasmodium malariae

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Geographical areas of malaria transmission

As a protist, the plasmodium is a eukaryote of the phylum Apicomplexa. Unusual characteristics of this organism in comparison to general eukaryotes include the rhoptry, micronemes, and polar rings near the apical end. The plasmodium is known best for the infection it causes, malaria.

Plasmodium malariae is a parasitic protozoan that causes malaria in humans.

The signs include fevers that recur at approximately three-day intervals – a quartan fever or quartan malaria – longer than the two-day (tertian) intervals of the other malarial parasites.

Plasmodium ovale

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Plasmodium ovale is a species of parasitic protozoa that causes tertian malaria in humans.

Plasmodium falciparum

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Laveran's drawing of various stages of P. falciparum as seen on fresh blood (1880).

Blood smear from a P. falciparum culture (K1 strain - asexual forms) - several red blood cells have ring stages inside them. Close to the center is a schizont and on the left a trophozoite.

Ring forms in red blood cells (Giemsa stain)

Plasmodium falciparum is a unicellular protozoan parasite of humans, and the deadliest species of Plasmodium that causes malaria in humans.

460–370 BCE) gave several descriptions on tertian fever and quartan fever.

Sepsis

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Life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs.

Blood culture bottles: orange cap for anaerobes, green cap for aerobes, and yellow cap for blood samples from children

Sepsis Steps. Training tool for teaching the progression of sepsis stages

Personification of septicemia, carrying a spray can marked "Poison"

Phenotypic strategy switches of microbes capable of provoking sepsis

Common signs and symptoms include fever, increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, and confusion.

The most common causes for parasitic sepsis are Plasmodium (which leads to malaria), Schistosoma and Echinococcus.

Plasmodium knowlesi

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A diagram of the life cycle of Plasmodium species that infect humans

A Plasmodium knowlesi merozoite attaching to a red blood cell

Giemsa-stained thin blood smears of human red blood cells infected with Plasmodium knowlesi

Robert Knowles, after whom P. knowlesi was named

Plasmodium knowlesi is a parasite that causes malaria in humans and other primates.

Those infected nearly always experience fever and chills.

A scanning electron microscope image of a single neutrophil (yellow/right), engulfing anthrax bacteria (orange/left) – scale bar is 5 µm (false color)

Immune system

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Network of biological processes that protects an organism from diseases.

A scanning electron microscope image of normal circulating human blood. One can see red blood cells, several knobby white blood cells including lymphocytes, a monocyte, a neutrophil, and many small disc-shaped platelets.

Overview of the processes involved in the primary immune response

An antibody is made up of two heavy chains and two light chains. The unique variable region allows an antibody to recognize its matching antigen.

The time-course of an immune response begins with the initial pathogen encounter, (or initial vaccination) and leads to the formation and maintenance of active immunological memory.

Joints of a hand swollen and deformed by rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disorder

Skeletal structural formula of the immunosuppressive drug dexamethasone

Macrophages have identified a cancer cell (the large, spiky mass). Upon fusing with the cancer cell, the macrophages (smaller white cells) inject toxins that kill the tumor cell. Immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer is an active area of medical research.

Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915) was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1908 for his contributions to immunology.

Eicosanoids include prostaglandins that produce fever and the dilation of blood vessels associated with inflammation, and leukotrienes that attract certain white blood cells (leukocytes).

Some examples of intracellular pathogens include viruses, the food poisoning bacterium Salmonella and the eukaryotic parasites that cause malaria (Plasmodium spp.) and leishmaniasis (Leishmania spp.).