Where does malaria appear?

QUESTION:

Where does malaria first appears on the body?

ANSWER:

That’s a very interesting question! You could say that malaria first appears in the blood, since that is how the parasite enters the human body—it passes into our bloodstream when an infected mosquito penetrates the skin to feed on blood.

The life cycle below, courtesy of CDC, explains more about the next stages of infection, and where the malaria parasite also passes within the human body.

The initial migration of malaria parasites is usually into the liver, after which they reproduce and begin to infect red blood cells. It is the cycles of infecting and bursting out of red blood cells, as part of the life cycle, that usually results in the classic cycles of chills, fever and sweating that characterises malaria infection. So in this way, you could say that malaria is first noticed once it begins to infect blood cells, throughout the body.

A generalised life cycle of the malaria parasite (courtesy of CDC; www.cdc.gov)