• Four malaria-carrying sporozoites [transmission]



• Stages of the disease



• Symptoms of malaria
  

• Plasmodium falciparum is the most lethal form of the disease. Death can result in 24 hours after the onset of symptoms. It accounts for 200 million clinical cases, around half of all cases, and 1-3 million deaths, including many children, every year worldwide. It causes death as a result of cerebral malaria, pulmonary or renal failure. The infected red blood cells become sticky and adhere to the small vessels in the brain severely restricting the flow of essential nutrients to the brain.



• Plasmodium malariae has the ability to relapse after spending the dormant stage in blood.



• Plasmodium ovale is associated with relapsing malaria by depositing a dormant form in the hosts liver.



• Plasmodium vivax common cause of human malaria, especially in South East Asia and in Central and South America. Though P. vivax rarely causes death, patients who contract this form of malaria may become very ill, with severe clinical symptoms. Sometimes these patients also may become anemic.

The life cycle of the malaria begins with the injection of the sporozoites with mosquito bite. The sporozoites travel to the liver in seconds and invade hepatocytes, the cells of the liver, where a series of asexual divisions of the sporozoites begins. They are then released into red blood cells and circulated freely. Sexual multiplication begins in red blood cells and is completed in the stomach of the mosquito when it sucks up the human blood. New sporozoites develop in the oocysts on the gut wall of the mosquito and later break out to concentrate in the mosquito salivary glands. When the mosquito bites a human, the sporozoites from the salivary glands are released into the human, and the life cycle begins once again.

Once one is bitten by an infected anopheles, the plasmodium parasite will take a while to make its effects visible. Depending on the plasmodium in question, this can range from between nine days (plasmodium falciparum) to thirty days (Plasmodium malariae). Some strains of Plasmodium vivax might take up to nine months before it becomes active.

The first sign one might have malaria is if one suddenly break out in a fever. At first, this might seem to be the flu. But if one has the slightest doubt, one needs check with a doctor. Most deaths are due to uncomplicated attacks of Plasmodium falciparum.

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Initial prodrome: headache,feeling of discomfort
soon later: fever, shaking chills, drowsiness,diarrhea,lethargy

If left untreated, malaria will leave you weak, groggy, and convulsions, and, finally, kidney failure and/or cerebral malaria (in which you fall into a coma from which you will never awaken). Needless to say, both of these extreme conditions spell death.

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