History of the discovery of the malaria parasites and their vectors

Francis Eg Cox

doi:10.1186/1756-3305-3-5

Abstract

Malaria is caused by infection with protozoan parasites belonging to the genus Plasmodium transmitted by female Anopheles species mosquitoes. Our understanding of the malaria parasites begins in 1880 with the discovery of the parasites in the blood of malaria patients by Alphonse Laveran. The sexual stages in the blood were discovered by William MacCallum in birds infected with a related haematozoan, Haemoproteus columbae, in 1897 and the whole of the transmission cycle in culicine mosquitoes and birds infected with Plasmodium relictum was elucidated by Ronald Ross in 1897. In 1898 the Italian malariologists, Giovanni Battista Grassi, Amico Bignami, Giuseppe Bastianelli, Angelo Celli, Camillo Golgi and Ettore Marchiafava demonstrated conclusively that human malaria was also transmitted by mosquitoes, in this case anophelines. The discovery that malaria parasites developed in the liver before entering the blood stream was made by Henry Shortt and Cyril Garnham in 1948 and the final stage in the life cycle, the presence of dormant stages in the liver, was conclusively demonstrated in 1982 by Wojciech Krotoski. This article traces the main events and stresses the importance of comparative studies in that, apart from the initial discovery of parasites in the blood, every subsequent discovery has been based on studies on non-human malaria parasites and related organisms.

Highlights

Malaria is an ancient disease and references to what was almost certainly malaria occur in a Chinese document from about 2700 BC, clay tablets from Mesopotamia from 2000 BC, Egyptian papyri from 1570 BC and Hindu texts as far back as the sixth century BC
Scientific studies only became possible after the discovery of the parasites themselves by Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran in 1880 and the incrimination of mosquitoes as the vectors, first for avian malaria by Ronald Ross in 1897 and for human malaria by the Italian scientists Giovanni Battista Grassi, Amico Bignami, Giuseppe Bastianelli, Angelo Celli, Camillo Golgi and Ettore Marchiafava between 1898 and 1900
The final [?] step The final stage in the story of our understanding of the malaria parasites that began when an unknown French scientist, working by himself in Algeria with a crude microscope, noticed that the blood of patients suffering from malaria contained organisms that he identified as parasitic protozoa culminated 122 years later when a massive team of investigators determined the compete genome of Plasmodium falciparum [61] since when the genomes of other malaria parasites have been published [62]

Summary

Background

Malaria is an ancient disease and references to what was almost certainly malaria occur in a Chinese document from about 2700 BC, clay tablets from Mesopotamia from 2000 BC, Egyptian papyri from 1570 BC and Hindu texts as far back as the sixth century BC. After the end of the Second World War in 1945 malaria research throughout the world intensified and a number of workers became convinced that that there must be an exoerythrocytic stage in the life cycle of the primate malarias but what form this took was not known This question was not resolved until 1947 when Henry Shortt and Cyril Garnham, working in London, showed that a phase of division in the liver preceded the development of parasites in the blood [46]. The final [?] step The final stage in the story of our understanding of the malaria parasites that began when an unknown French scientist, working by himself in Algeria with a crude microscope, noticed that the blood of patients suffering from malaria contained organisms that he identified as parasitic protozoa culminated 122 years later when a massive team of investigators determined the compete genome of Plasmodium falciparum [61] since when the genomes of other malaria parasites have been published [62]

Conclusions

Celli A: A History of Malaria in the Italian Campagna from Ancient

36. Manson P

39. Ascenzi A