Sir Ronald Ross was a British medical doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on the transmission of malaria, becoming the first British Nobel laureate, and the first born outside Europe. His discovery of the malarial parasite in the gastrointestinal tract of a mosquito in 1897 proved that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, and laid the foundation for the method of combating the disease.
Anopheles is a genus of mosquito first described by the German entomologist J. W. Meigen in 1818, and are known as nail mosquitoes and marsh mosquitoes. Many such mosquitoes are vectors of the parasite Plasmodium, a genus of protozoans that cause malaria in birds, reptiles, and mammals, including humans. The Anopheles gambiae mosquito is the best-known species of marsh mosquito that transmits the Plasmodium falciparum, which is a malarial parasite deadly to human beings; no other mosquito genus is a vector of human malaria.
Plasmodium falciparum is a unicellular protozoan parasite of humans, and the deadliest species of Plasmodium that causes malaria in humans. The parasite is transmitted through the bite of a female Anopheles mosquito and causes the disease's most dangerous form, falciparum malaria. It is responsible for around 50% of all malaria cases. P. falciparum is therefore regarded as the deadliest parasite in humans. It is also associated with the development of blood cancer and is classified as a Group 2A (probable) carcinogen.
Jan E. Conn is a Canadian geneticist and poet. She resides in Great Barrington, Massachusetts where she does research on mosquito genetics at the Wadsworth Center, Division of Infectious Diseases, New York State Department of Health in Albany, New York. She has also written six books of poetry.
Giovanni Battista Grassi was an Italian physician and zoologist, best known for his pioneering works on parasitology, especially on malariology. He was Professor of Comparative Zoology at the University of Catania from 1883, and Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Sapienza University of Rome from 1895 until his death. His first major research on the taxonomy and biology of termites earned him the Royal Society's Darwin Medal in 1896.
A mosquito net is a type of meshed curtain that is circumferentially draped over a bed or a sleeping area, to offer the sleeper barrier protection against bites and stings from mosquitos, flies, and other pest insects, and thus against the diseases they may carry. Examples of such preventable insect-borne diseases include malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, zika virus, Chagas disease and various forms of encephalitis, including the West Nile virus.
Plasmodium knowlesi is a parasite that causes malaria in humans and other primates. It is found throughout Southeast Asia, and is the most common cause of human malaria in Malaysia. Like other Plasmodium species, P. knowlesi has a life cycle that requires infection of both a mosquito and a warm-blooded host. While the natural warm-blooded hosts of P. knowlesi are likely various Old World monkeys, humans can be infected by P. knowlesi if they are fed upon by infected mosquitoes. P. knowlesi is a eukaryote in the phylum Apicomplexa, genus Plasmodium, and subgenus Plasmodium. It is most closely related to the human parasite Plasmodium vivax as well as other Plasmodium species that infect non-human primates.
Avian malaria is a parasitic disease of birds, caused by parasite species belonging to the genera Plasmodium and Hemoproteus. The disease is transmitted by a dipteran vector including mosquitoes in the case of Plasmodium parasites and biting midges for Hemoproteus. The range of symptoms and effects of the parasite on its bird hosts is very wide, from asymptomatic cases to drastic population declines due to the disease, as is the case of the Hawaiian honeycreepers. The diversity of parasites is large, as it is estimated that there are approximately as many parasites as there are species of hosts. As research on human malaria parasites became difficult, Dr. Ross studied avian malaria parasites. Co-speciation and host switching events have contributed to the broad range of hosts that these parasites can infect, causing avian malaria to be a widespread global disease, found everywhere except Antarctica.
In epidemiology, a disease vector is any living agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen such as a parasite or microbe, to another living organism. Agents regarded as vectors are mostly blood-sucking insects such as mosquitoes. The first major discovery of a disease vector came from Ronald Ross in 1897, who discovered the malaria pathogen when he dissected the stomach tissue of a mosquito.
Amico Bignami was an Italian physician, pathologist, malariologist and sceptic. He was professor of pathology at Sapienza University of Rome. His most important scientific contribution was in the discovery of transmission of human malarial parasite in the mosquito.
The history of malaria extends from its prehistoric origin as a zoonotic disease in the primates of Africa through to the 21st century. A widespread and potentially lethal human infectious disease, at its peak malaria infested every continent except Antarctica. Its prevention and treatment have been targeted in science and medicine for hundreds of years. Since the discovery of the Plasmodium parasites which cause it, research attention has focused on their biology as well as that of the mosquitoes which transmit the parasites.
Mosquito-borne diseases or mosquito-borne illnesses are diseases caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites transmitted by mosquitoes. Nearly 700 million people contract mosquito-borne illnesses each year, resulting in more than a million deaths.
Sir Ronald Ross Institute of Parasitology is a malaria research institute located in Begumpet, Secunderabad, Hyderabad, India. Established in 1955, the institute is a division of Osmania University. The institute is named after Sir Ronald Ross, winner of Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1902.
Anopheles darlingi, the American malaria mosquito, is a species of mosquito in the family Culicidae. A. darlingi is one of the major species of mosquito known to be responsible for malaria in the Amazonian regions. It has a wide range of geographic distribution that stretches from Mexico and Argentina but it has also been found to populate in areas affected by deforestation and environment changes due to humans.
Anopheles claviger is a mosquito species found in Palearctic realm covering Europe, North Africa, northern Arabian Peninsula, and northern Asia. It is responsible for transmitting malaria in some of these regions. The mosquito is made up of a species complex consisting of An. claviger sensu stricto and An. petragnani Del Vecchio. An. petragnani is found only in western Mediterranean region, and is reported to bite only animals; hence, it is not involved in human malaria.
Mosquito-malaria theory was a scientific theory developed in the latter half of the 19th century that solved the question of how malaria was transmitted. The theory proposed that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, in opposition to the centuries-old medical dogma that malaria was due to bad air, or miasma. The first scientific idea was postulated in 1851 by Charles E. Johnson, who argued that miasma had no direct relationship with malaria. Although Johnson's hypothesis was forgotten, the arrival and validation of the germ theory of diseases in the late 19th century began to shed new lights. When Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran discovered that malaria was caused by a protozoan parasite in 1880, the miasma theory began to subside.
Anopheles sinensis is a species of mosquito that transmits malaria as well as lymphatic filariasis. It is regarded as the most important vector of these human parasitic diseases in Southeast Asia. It is the primary vector of vivax malaria in many regions. In China it also transmits the filalarial parasite, and arthropod roundworm. In Japan it is also a vector of a roundworm Setaria digitata in sheep and goats.
Anopheles freeborni, commonly known as the western malaria mosquito, is a species of mosquito in the family Culicidae. It is typically found in the western United States and Canada. Adults are brown to black, with yellow-brown hairs and gray-brown stripes on the thorax. Their scaly wings have four dark spots, which are less distinct in the male.
Quartan fever is one of the four types of malaria which can be contracted by humans.
Anopheles minimus is a species of mosquito can be found around Oriental region included: India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Southern China comprising Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands of Japan. It was the main vector of malaria.
