Overview of Protozoan Parasite – a Cause of Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by the Protozoan parasite. People affected with malaria often experience fever, chills, and flu-like illness. If left untreated, the person will develop severe complications and die. Each year 350-500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, and over one million people die, from young children in sub-Saharan Africa.

The person suffering from malaria in the graph exhibited a core body temperature of 36°C between 12 noon and 4pm on the 4th May. The person would be experiencing the cold stage. The cold stage starts off with shaking chills, this can last 15 min to an hour. Symptoms that the person affected by malaria in the graph above would experience between 8pm and 12midnight on the 4th May would be, profuse sweating and the fever gradually subsiding over the time span of 2-4 hours. Between the time span of 8pm and 12 midnight the person’s core body temperature decreases from almost 40°C to below the normal range of 37°C. The dropping of the core temperature is caused by the sweating, it is the bodies ‘cooling system’ to bring down the high temperature.

The time span between the lapses of successive temperature peaks are around 48 hours. Plasmodium in the Erythrocytic cycle is the reason for the excessive temperature peaks throughout malaria. The life cycle of the plasmodium vivax goes through several stages, the erythrocytic schizogony, Merozoites and trophozoites in the liver. During the erythrocytic schizogony stage the parasites under goes asexual multiplication to form merozoites which infect red blood cells. The ring stage trophozoites mature into schizonts, which the red blood cells rupture releasing merozoites. The rapturing of the red blood cells is the cause of the high temperature peaks through the body. The rupture of the erythrocytes is synchronised and coincides with peak temperature during the fever cycle.

There are three stages to the attack and they are the ‘cold stage’, ‘hot stage’ and the ‘sweating stage’. The cold stage is a 15-to-60-minute stage characterized by shivering and a feeling of cold. Next comes the hot stage which goes for around 2-to-6hours which includes a fever sometimes reaching 41°C and includes, flushed, dry skin, often headache, nausea, and vomiting. Then lastly comes the sweating stage that goes for around 2-to-4hours, this is how the fever drops rapidly and the patient sweats. The cause of these ‘cold’, ‘hot’ and ‘sweating’ stages is the virus rapturing the red blood cells though the body, this occurs in the erythrocytic cycle of the parasite. When the temperature lowers down, the person suffering malaria sweats profusely. The malaria fever takes place when schizonts in RBC burst, liberating the merozoites and hemozoin (malarial pigment) in the blood plasma. This hemozoin is meant to be toxic and so induces high fever with shivering. The bursting of schizonts tends to be synchronous as they all burst at the same time.