- Malaria or ague is the most devastating parasitic
disease of man described since antiquity
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- References can be found in the Vedic writings of 1600
B.C. in India and by Hippocrates some 2500 years ago.
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- Charaka and Sushrutha gave vivid descriptions of malaria
and even associated it with the bites of the mosquitoes.
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- In 1640, Huan del Vego first employed the tincture of
the cinchona bark for treating malaria, although aborigines
of Peru and Ecuador had been using it even earlier for treating
fevers.
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- Morton (1696) presented the first detailed clinical picture
of malaria and its treatment with cinchona.
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- Lancisi (1717) linked malaria with poisonous vapours of
swamps and thus originated the name malaria, meaning
bad air
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- Gize (1816) studied extraction of quinine from the cinchona
bark
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- Pelletier and Caventou (1820) extracted pure quinine alkaloids
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- Laveran (1880) a French physician working in Algeria,
first identified the causative agent for human malaria while
viewing blood slides under a microscope.
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- P.vivax and P.malariae were identified in 1885 by Golgi
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- Sakharov (1889) and Marchiafava and Celli (1890) identified
P.falciparum
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- Sir Ronald Ross (1897) while working as a military physician
in India, demonstrated the malarial oocysts in the gut tissue
of female Anopheles mosquito. This was reported in the British
Medical Journal
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- Paul Muller (1939) discovered the insecticidal properties
of DDT
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- Curd, Davey and Rose (1944) synthesised proguanil for
treating falciparum malaria
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- During the World War II research into antimalarials was
intensified
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- Chloroquine was synthesised and studied under the name
of Resochin by the Germans as early as 1934
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- Short, Granham, Covell and Shute (England) identified
tissue forms of P.vivax in the liver. Tissue stages of P.
falciparum, P. ovale, and P. malariae were also identified
later on
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- Elderfield (1950, USA) synthesised primaquine
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- Lysenko (1976-78) formulated a theory on the polymorphism
of P.vivax sporozoites
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- Bray and Garnham (1982) proposed that some sporozoites
in the liver remain latent (hypnozoites) causing relapses
later on
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- Quinine has now been completely synthesized. Its synthetic
analogue is called mefloquine.
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- Quighaosu is a "new" anti-malarial drug that is derived
from the sweet wormwood (Qinghao) plant (genus Artemisia).
It has been used in China for more than two thousand years
to treat fever associated with malaria. The drug has been
shown to be effective even in the treatment of severe falciparum
malaria and has been effective against strains of Plasmodium
falciparum that are resistant to chloroquine.
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- In 1967, WHO realized that the global
eradication of malaria was impossible for a variety of reasons
and the focus shifted to control of the disease.
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