Malaria parasites of spread by infecting
successively two types of hosts, namely:
Human and the femaleanopheles mosquito. In human the parasites grow and multiply firstly in the
liver cells and then in the red blood cells. In the blood the group of parasite
grow inside the red blood cells and destroy them, releasing daughter parasites
(merozoites) that continue the cycle by invading other red blood cells. The
blood stage parasites are the ones that cause malaria symptoms. When certain
forms of blood stage parasites (gametocytes) are packed up by a female
anopheles mosquito during a blood meal, they start another cycle of growth and
multiplication in the mosquitoe. After 10-18 days, the parasites are young (as
sporozoites) in the mosquitoes salivary gland when the human, the sporozoites
are injected into the human with the mosquitoes saliva and start infection in
the human
when the parasitize the liver cells. Thus, the mosquito carries the
disease from one human to another, acting as a vector in contrast to human
host, the mosquito vector does not suffer from the presence of malaria parasite.
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