MALARIA

Malaria General Information

Malaria is a severe disease which sometimes can be fatal. It is caused by a parasite from a certain species of mosquito that attacks humans. There are four kinds of Malaria parasites that represent a threat for the human: Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium Ovale and Plasmodium Malariae. Where does it occur? It is a typical disease for tropical and subtropical countries. The high temperatures attract the Anopheles mosquito and encourage the development of the parasites. The Malaria risk regions are in sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia. It is estimated that each year 300-500 million people contact the disease and over one million die because of it. Most of these cases are young children. Africa is the most affected continent. There a child dies every 30 seconds from this disease.

How is Malaria transmitted

The most frequent way to get it is be being bitten by a female Anopheles mosquito. These insects get the disease by biting already infected persons and they pass it on by biting other healthy persons. The parasites are found in red blood cells and they can be transmitted to others through blood transfusions and organ transplants. The disease is not contagious and it cannot be sexually transmitted.  The risk of getting the disease increases if you travel in the countries that are known to have a high percentage of infected population. The people who are most at risk of getting infected are young children and pregnant women. For protection against the disease please consult you health-care provider.

Malaria Symptoms

What are the symptoms of Malaria? How soon they appear? Fever, flu-like illness, shaking chills, headache, muscle aches and tiredness are certain symptoms of the disease. Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea are also symptoms, but they appear only in some people. The loss of red blood cells can cause anemia and jaundice (the eyes and the skin turn yellow). The symptoms usually occur in ten days to four months after the infestation, but you can feel ill after 7 days or after one year. Even so, in the cases of Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium vivax parasites the disease can occur 4 years later after a person is infected. This happens because the parasites remain dormant in the liver. The safest way to know if one has Malaria is to go to his health-care provider and have a diagnostic test. The test consists of examining a blood drop for parasites under the microscope. If there is a suspicion of the virus you should ask your health-care provider to take this test as soon as possible. Also symptoms vary depending on the type of parasite that caused the disease. For example in the case of Plasmodium falciparum the symptoms may include the enlargement of the liver and an increased respiratory rate. You should also be alerted if you have one of these other problems: acute kidney failure, metabolic acidosis (when your blood  acidity is higher than usual) and hypoglycemia (which usually occurs at pregnant women). In Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium vivax cases the infection has relapses over time without symptoms.

Malaria Treatment

The treatment of Malaria should be started immediately after discovering it. It is very important to treat the disease because it can cause death. There are available several drugs on the market that should be taken in the early stages of the disease. The most important step in the treatment is diagnosing the disease. Where this malady is not common any more (like in the United States of America), health-care providers seeing a Malaria patient might forget to include the disease among the possible diagnoses and this may resort in not ordering the proper diagnostic tests. Also laboratory-assistants may be deficient in experience with this type of parasites and fail to identify them when examining blood drops under the microscope. The blood drops are broadening as a "blood smear" on a microscope slide. Before the examination, the sample is marked (most frequently with the Giemsa mark) to provide the parasites with a distinctive appearance. This method remains the number one standard for laboratory authentication of Malaria. The acute symptoms of the disease can be restrained with chloroquine and the liver infection can be prevented with a medication named primaquine. The second drug is more toxic than the first and has more side effects but it is a very successful type of treatment. People who have a lack of the blood enzyme G6PD are more vulnerable at primaquine treatment but such a deficiency is easy to find out with a normal blood test before the treatment with primaquine is started.

Preventing the disease is better than curing it as the parasites are becoming more and more resistant to prescribed drugs. Once the disease has been confirmed, proper anti-malarial treatment must be started immediately. The treatment is influenced by three main factors: the Plasmodium specie that caused the infection, the medical condition of the patient, and the drug vulnerability of the parasite that caused the malady which is established after the geographic region where the infection took place. Patients that have the disease are usually diagnosticated with either the uncomplicated form of the malady either the severe one. The persons from the first category can be efficiently treated with oral drugs. However, patients who present one or more of the next symptoms: coma, severe anemia, pulmonary edema, renal failure, circulatory shock, acute respiratory distress syndrome, acidosis, spontaneous bleeding, hemoglobinuria, repeated generalized convulsions, jaundice are considered to have the severe form of the disease and must be treated with proper anti-malarial treatment. Knowing the geographic region where the infection took place is very helpful for the doctors because it provides information concerning the resistance of the parasite at certain drugs and helps the doctor to choose a suitable drug and to establish a certain treatment course. If you are suspected with the malady but it cannot be confirmed, or if it is confirmed but the species of parasite is unknown, you should proceed immediately with drugs against Plasmodium falciparum. After beginning the treatment, the patient’s status should be monitored.