Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: bugzy on 09/07/2005 19:06:38
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Malaria as been a great disease in africa, affecting both the female and male.
The symptoms are as follows-
Headache,bitter mouth,feeling dizzy,cold,cathar etc...
i guess it is very difficult for it not to appear especially where there is mosqitoes...
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i am currently reading a very interesting book which will answer your question. its called The Miraculous Fever Tree by Fiammetta Rocco.[:)]
this book focuses on the chinchona bark found in Peru in South America. this bark when brewed makes a substance today known at Quinine. It has been used sucessfully for hundreds of year to treat intermittent fevers, such as malaria.
While malaria is still very prevalant in the third world countries, this is mainly due to a lack of medical supplies, rather than a lack of a cure for it.
hope this helps, and you should read the book, its very interesting and informative.
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I believe Quinine combats malaria, but I don't think it cures it. Please correct me if I am wrong. (A cure means it is totally removed from the body, and you don't have to continue medication once you are removed from the enviroment.) The Sickle cell abnormality that Negroid Africans get is tied to a genetic modification that helps this race resist the worst effects of malaria: i.e. the death rate from untreated malaria is less than the untreated European death rate.
For a long time, an assignment to the African colonies was a death warrant for Europeans as about 80% died and the rest got very sick. It is a vicious little bug that deserves to be wiped out. No endangered species protection for those mosquitoes.
David
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There are drugs that, when properly used, will cure malaria. However some drug-resistant forms of malaria occur. Forms of malaria can remain in the liver or sequestered in other organs such that an apparently cured individual can sometimes relapse into malaria, days, weeks or even years after being drug treated. It is important that drug treatment be continued for a couple weeks after leaving a malarious region.
Peter C. Sayles
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Forget sharks, bears, snakes, spiders, scorpions, tigers and hippo's, the Mosquito is the biggest killer of Humans. It is said that they are responsible for the death of more humans throughout history than are alive today!!!