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Macrophage
Malaria is a disease common to tropical climates which infects almost 500 million people and kills more than one million people every year. Malaria is caused by parasitic protozoa which infect mosquitoes, and the disease is then transmitted by mosquito bites through the blood of humans. Malaria causes joint pain, vomiting, and anemia. Ultimately, it can lead to coma and death, especially in children and pregnant women. Having anemia provides some resistance to malaria, because without healthy red blood cells, it is difficult for the protozoa to infect the cells. This is why favism, which leads to fewer healthy red blood cells, can provide some advantage against malaria.
Malaria Quotes in Survival of the Sickest
The Survival of the Sickest quotes below are all either spoken by Malaria or refer to Malaria. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 4
Quotes
By releasing free radicals and raising the level of oxidants, fava bean consumption makes the blood cells of non-G6PD deficient people a less hospitable place for malarial parasites. With all the free radicals, some red blood cells tend to break down. And when someone with a mild or partial deficiency in G6PD eats fava beans, the parasite is in deep trouble.
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Malaria Term Timeline in Survival of the Sickest
The timeline below shows where the term Malaria appears in Survival of the Sickest. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 4: Hey, Bud, Can You Do Me a Fava?
...aversion to fava beans during the Korean War. American soldiers were prescribed drugs to combat malaria, including one called primaquine. About 10 percent of African American soldiers developed anemia while taking...
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...unpaired electrons that can disrupt cellular chemistry. Primaquine is thought to stop the spread of malaria by preventing malaria-causing parasites from invading the body’s red blood cells. But with a lack...
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...However, this gives people an advantage over another common disease around Africa and the Mediterranean: malaria.
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Malaria infects almost 500 million people and kills more than 1 million people every year. Malaria...
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In reality, malaria is caused by parasitic protozoa which are deposited in the human bloodstream through mosquitoes. The...
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Humans have long been relying on herbal remedies, but the first antimalarial medicine came from George Cleghorn in the 19th century, who found a remedy in the...
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Chapter 5: Of Microbes and Men
...how the disease reenters the water supply and ensures its ability to find new hosts. Malaria also manipulates human hosts by incapacitating them—when someone with malaria is incapacitated, they are a...
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...through air or physical contact (like the cold or STDs); through an intermediate organism (like malaria); or through contaminated food or water (like cholera). Ewald asserted that diseases that travel through...
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