Plasmodium Vivax, a Hidden Killer

Daniel J. Pool
Zoology
Paper One
Dr. Mather
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One of the most feared diseases of man has and is Malaria (Carlton, 2008). It is a parasite

that lives between humans and mosquitoes. For as long as man has been on Earth, he has been

the prey of this unwholesome union with the dreaded Plasmodium vivax. P. vivax is spread

though the bite of the female amopheline mosquito (Despommier & Karapelou, 1987), as such it

has become a menace among the poorer nations that are around the equator where treatment is

had to come by (Carlton, 2008). To better understand this malignant invader and its methods one

must study its physiology, its health concerns to humans, and most importantly how one can stop

its spread.

The Protozoa is a member of the order Haemosporida which are the intracellular blood

parasites (Kudo, 1971). The organism has a several step life cycle in which it lives in both a

vertebrate and a blood sucking host. The mosquito is important as the intermediate host in P.

vivax’s sexual stage, and humans are the asexual, schizogonic, host (Despommier & Karapelou,

1987). The mosquito first ingests the blood of an infected specimen, after which a series of

genetic swapping occurs, ending in the P. vivax returning to the mosquito’s salivary glands and

being returned into a human host. The organism must enter a human host or else it will die as it

can only schizogonous reproduce within a human host (Kudo, 1971). After the end of the

schizogonic cycle the newly reformed male and female P. vivax are acquired once again by the

female anopheline mosquito (Despommier & Karapelou, 1987). Throughout its life cycle the

organism goes though several physical changes, going from a gametocyte, to an ookinete, to

sporozoites, to merozites, then to trophozoites, and finally back into their respective

macrogametocyte (female) or mircogametocytes (male) counterparts. They resemble disks and at

some parts of their lifecycles they have flagellum (Hyman, 1940). Their size ranges between
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approximately 2 – 3 µm long (Despommier & Karapelou, 1987) up to as long as 6 – 15 µm long

(Kudo, 1971).

P. vivax can reproduce a full group of merozoites every forty-eight hours, creating large

numbers of individuals in a short amount of time (Kudo, 1971). These merozoites repeat

schizogony over and over again only to die every forty-eight hours, releasing large amounts of

toxins into the body with each cycle weakening the host. This can occur a few weeks after first

infection or take years (Carlton, 2008). During this cycle the infected individual will become

weak and receptive to other diseases, and can itself cause death (Kudo, 1971). It killed fifteen-

thousand in the early nineteen-hundreds and is still held responsible for over two-hundred-

million deaths world-wide today.

Not many cures exist to combat the P. vivax. In malaria stricken nations some residents

develop immunity over time (Hyman, 1940), however the best treatment are drugs designed to

eradicate blood borne pathogens (Carlton, 2008). The most potent being primaquine, which kills

the parasite in the hypnozoites stages. However new strains of the parasite have managed to

develop immunities to these new drugs making them even harder to kill. The other problem is if

one does not fully remove the infection then in a few days, months, or years it can return in full

force with no clear warning signs (Hyman, 1940). The parasite is so hard to remove once within

a host that the best “cure” to date has been the eradication of mosquito breeding grounds.

In the end this curious protozoa is as deadly as it is beautiful in its complexity. The

dynamic life cycle and the creatures’ tenacity make it stand out in a universe of more complex

creatures. The Plasmodium vivax is a testament to evolution for the fact that a single cell

organism can bring the civilization of man to its knees, one mosquito bite at a time.

Works Cited
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Comparative genomics of the neglected human malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax 455.7214

(2008): 757-63. Nature Publishing Group, 10 Sept. 2008. Web. 6 Nov. 2009.

Despommier, Dickson D. Parasite life cycles. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1987. Print.

Hyman, Libbie H. The Invertebrates, Protozoa Through Ctenophora. 1st ed. Vol. 1. New York

and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1940. Print.

Kudo, Richard R., D.Sc. Protozoology. 5th ed. Springfield: Charles C Thomas, 1971. Print.