Angela
Elite member
- Messages
- 21,823
- Reaction score
- 12,327
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
We forget what a scourge this was for so much of human history. Now, these scientists claim predecessor forms have been around since the age of the dinosaurs.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160328133536.htm
"Malaria, a scourge on human society that still kills more than 400,000 people a year, is often thought to be of more modern origin -- ranging from 15,000 to 8 million years old, caused primarily by one genus of protozoa, Plasmodium, and spread by anopheline mosquitoes.But the ancestral forms of this disease used different insect vectors and different malarial strains, and may literally have helped shape animal survival and evolution on Earth, according to George Poinar, Jr., a researcher in the College of Science at Oregon State University.
Poinar suggested in the journal American Entomologist that the origins of this deadly disease, which today can infect animals ranging from humans and other mammals to birds and reptiles, may have begun in an insect such as the biting midge more than 100 million years ago. And in previous work, Poinar and his wife, Roberta, implicated malaria and the evolution of blood-sucking insects as disease vectors that could have played a significant role in the extinction of the dinosaurs."
"The first human recording of malaria was in China in 2,700 B.C., and some researchers say it may have helped lead to the fall of the Roman Empire. In 2015 there were 214 million cases worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Immunity does not occur naturally and the search for a vaccine has not yet been achieved."
My father was infected in North Africa, and twenty-five years later he was still suffering from periodic attacks. It's terrible, and modern strains don't seem to be as bad as some that were prevalent in the ancient world.
King Tut, the Egyptian Pharoah, apparently suffered from a particularly virulent strain.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160328133536.htm
"Malaria, a scourge on human society that still kills more than 400,000 people a year, is often thought to be of more modern origin -- ranging from 15,000 to 8 million years old, caused primarily by one genus of protozoa, Plasmodium, and spread by anopheline mosquitoes.But the ancestral forms of this disease used different insect vectors and different malarial strains, and may literally have helped shape animal survival and evolution on Earth, according to George Poinar, Jr., a researcher in the College of Science at Oregon State University.
Poinar suggested in the journal American Entomologist that the origins of this deadly disease, which today can infect animals ranging from humans and other mammals to birds and reptiles, may have begun in an insect such as the biting midge more than 100 million years ago. And in previous work, Poinar and his wife, Roberta, implicated malaria and the evolution of blood-sucking insects as disease vectors that could have played a significant role in the extinction of the dinosaurs."
"The first human recording of malaria was in China in 2,700 B.C., and some researchers say it may have helped lead to the fall of the Roman Empire. In 2015 there were 214 million cases worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Immunity does not occur naturally and the search for a vaccine has not yet been achieved."
My father was infected in North Africa, and twenty-five years later he was still suffering from periodic attacks. It's terrible, and modern strains don't seem to be as bad as some that were prevalent in the ancient world.
King Tut, the Egyptian Pharoah, apparently suffered from a particularly virulent strain.