Malaria: Burden of Disease

Abstract

Despite more than 100 years since Laveran described plasmodium species and Ross confirmed that they were transmitted by female anopheline mosquitoes, malaria remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although the areas where transmission takes place have reduced, and they are by now confined to the inter tropical areas, the number of people living at risk has grown to about 3 billion, and is expected to go on increasing. Not only does malaria cause around 500 million cases every year, and between 1 and 3 million deaths, but it also carries a huge burden that impairs the economic and social development of large parts of the planet. The failed attempt to eradicate malaria gave way to the control policy that was followed by a huge resurgence of malaria during the late 70s and 80s. Together with the emergence and spread of resistance to chloroquine and the weak health infrastructure in many of the endemic countries, particularly in Africa, the malaria situation worsened worldwide. The last decade of the 20th century was witness to the international community becoming increasingly aware of the unacceptable situation that the burden of malaria represented to large parts of the world. Renewed efforts to describe the problem, design and evaluate new control strategies, design and develop new drugs, better understand the biology of the parasite and the immunity it induces in the human host, develop candidate vaccines, together with new financial support constitute renewed hope that may lead to new trends in global health.

Biosynthesis of GDP-fucose and Other Sugar Nucleotides in the Blood Stages of Plasmodium falciparum

“…Among the five Plasmodium species that cause malaria in humans (Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium malariae, Plasmodium ovale, and Plasmodium knowlesi), P. falciparum is the most deadly and is responsible for the majority of the malarialinked deaths in sub-Saharan Africa (1). Chemotherapy is one of the central strategies for malaria treatment, but unfortunately, drug resistance to commonly used antimalarial drugs has spread very rapidly (2,3). The implementation of new approaches to prevent and fight malaria has greatly benefited from the sequencing of the parasite genome (4) and the development of improved tools for functional genomics (5)(6)(7)(8).…”

The Ig Domain Protein CD9P-1 Down-regulates CD81 Ability to Support Plasmodium yoelii Infection

“…Malaria remains the most important parasitic human disease, responsible for nearly one million deaths each year (1). Plasmodium natural infection is initiated by the inoculation of sporozoites in the host by a female Anopheles mosquito.…”

The Fate of the Red Cells: Insights from Two Models of Severe Malarial Anemia

“…Of the four human malarias, P. vivax and P. falciparum are the most abundant and P. falciparum causes the most severe disease. 2 While malaria is distributed primarily in the tropics and is considered a disease of the developing world, it is still of interest to developed countries because of the global impact of malaria. Over 3 billion people live in at risk areas and approximately 1 million deaths annually are attributed to malaria 3 .…”