Malaria is a vector-borne disease known to affect both animals and human beings and is transmitted by the female anopheles gambiae mosquito during the transmissible sporozoite stage (WHO, 2014). The symptoms of malaria may include headaches, shivers and fevers, and vomiting. If not treated it can cause yellow skin, which could lead to a coma and consequently it could lead to death (Caraballo, 2014). This paper will make use of the peer-reviewed article by Lacroix, Mukabana, Gouagna, & Koella, (2005) as the basis for studying emerging and re-emerging diseases. There has been a big debate for many years on the disease epidemiology, on whether the disease parasite (the gametocyte) can manipulate the attractiveness of the vector to the host or whether the host attractiveness to the vector differs because of the hosts’ intrinsic factors; factors like body sweat components or odor and body temperature and moisture as this has been a very controversial topic in the biology of malaria (Lacroix, Mukabana, Gouagna, & Koella, 2005). The article carries out research about how and why the mosquito is attracted to humans, which was conducted by monitoring 12 groups of children in a controlled environment in western Kenya, Africa. It was found that the malaria parasite gametocyte in humans is able to manipulate how frequently mosquito bites by increasing its urge to bite during the infectious sporozoite stage of the mosquito. It was also found that the parasite controlled the urge by reducing the number of times the mosquito can bite during the non-infectious oocyst stage of the mosquito. Since biting at this stage is dangerous, it was concluded that intrinsically the mosquito had developed a survival mechanism that seemed to ensure its development to the transmissible stage (Renaud, Louis & Jacob, 2005). The authors used 12 groups of three children from western Kenya where in each group one child was free of the infectious parasite, the second was infected with the non-infectious asexual stage of the malaria parasite and the third was infected with the gametocyte parasite which is the transmissible stage of the parasite. They used tubes and tents connected to an olfactometer and a fan that was used to draw air from each tent and 100 mosquitoes would be released so that they would follow their desired scent from each of the tents (Lacroix et al. 2005). The children would enter the tents in the evening to sleep or rest while the authors studied the behavior of the mosquitoes. The authors aimed at providing information to researchers seeking to unravel the mystery behind the variability of the disease vector attractiveness to the human in the transmissible stage sporozoite, and the unattractiveness of the disease vector to humans in the non-infectious development stage. The oocyst stage as previous studies have shown, is not conclusive on this subject owing to the fact that humans are intrinsically varied in the way they attract mosquitoes (Lacroix et al., 2005). It was concluded that with the advent of this new information on how the malaria parasite is able to manipulate the disease vector in different stages of its development, it is imperative that this information is put into consideration by the epidemiology of the disease, as it would otherwise affect the strategies and methods employed to combat the vector-borne disease in the future (Lacroix et al., 2005).
References
Lacroix, R., Mukabana, W. R., Gouagna, L. C., & Koella, J. C. (2005). Malaria infection increases attractiveness of humans to mosquitoes. PLoS biology , 3 (9), e298.
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World Health Organization. (6 July 2005). Geneva: World Health Organization malaria report
2005 . (Online resource) Retrieved from: http://rbm.who.int/wmr2005/ on September 19, 2017.
