Pathophysiology of malaria.

ABSTRACT

The pathophysiology of malaria infection is presented from animal studies and the various manifestations occurring in human cases. Maegraith (1974) proposed the concept of a chain reaction of physiological processes that leads to the disease following malarial infection. It may be seen that the malaria parasites first damage the infected red blood cells directly and then initiate a chain reaction of nonspecific inflammatory processes and later on immunological responses aggravating further the inflammatory reactions. Because of ther interdependence in nature of these changes as suggested by Maegraith in 1977 it is usually difficult to clearly identify these three mechanisms.