Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about malaria.

And you can find written notes on this topic at zero tofinals.com slash malaria

or in the infectious diseases section of the second edition of the zero to finals medicine book.

So let's get straight into it.

Malaria is an infectious disease caused by members of the Plasmodium family of protozoan parasites.

Protozoa are single-celled organisms.

The most severe and dangerous type of malaria is Plasmodium falciparum, which accounts for

about 80% of malaria cases in the UK.

Malaria is spread through bites from female anopheles mosquitoes that carry the disease.

It's not transmitted in the UK and it's associated with travel to areas where malaria is present.

Let's go through the five types. These types are plasmodium

falsiparum, which is the most common and severe form, plasmodium vivax, plasmodium ovale,

plasmodium malaria and plasmodium nolesi. Let'smodium Nolese.

Let's go through the life cycle.

Malaria is spread by female anopheles mosquitoes, usually at night time.

A feeding mosquito sucks up infected blood.

Then the parasites reproduce in the mosquito's gut, producing thousands of sporozoids, which are malaria spores. When this mosquito bites someone, the sporozoids are

injected. These sporozoids travel to the liver of the newly infected person.

Plasmodium vivax and plasmodium ovalee can lie dormant as hypnozoits for months or years before

reactivating.

The malaria parasites mature in the liver into merozoids,

...