Plasmodium knowlesi
| Plasmodium knowlesi | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Protista |
| Phylum: | Apicomplexa |
| Class: | Aconoidasida |
| Order: | Haemosporida |
| Family: | Plasmodiidae |
| Genus: | Plasmodium |
| Species: | P. knowlesi |
| Binomial name | |
|
Plasmodium knowlesi Sinton and Mulligan 1933 |
|
Plasmodium knowlesi is a primate malaria parasite commonly found in Southeast Asia. It causes malaria in long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), but it may also infect humans, either naturally or artificially.
Plasmodium knowlesi is the sixth major human malaria parasite (following the division of Plasmodium ovale into 2 subspecies). It may cause severe malaria as indicated by its asexual erythrocytic cycle of about 24 hours, with an associated fever that typically occurs at the same frequency (i.e. the fever is quotidian). This is an emerging infection that was reported for the first time in humans in 1965. It accounts for up to 70% of malaria cases in certain areas in South East Asia where it is mostly found. This parasite is transmitted by the bite of an Anopheles mosquito.Plasmodium knowlesi has health, social and economic consequences for the regions affected by it.
The first person to see P. knowlesi was probably the Italian Giuseppe Franchini in 1927 when he was examining the blood of Macaca fascicularis and he noted that it differed from Plasmodium cynomolgi and Plasmodium inui. It was later seen by Campbell in 1931 in a long-tailed macaque imported from Singapore to the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in India. Campbell was interested in kala azar and was working under Napier. Napier inoculated the strain into three monkeys, one of which was a rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta), which developed a fulminating infection. Knowing that the Protozoological Department were looking for a monkey malaria strain, they handed the original infected monkey to Biraj Mohan Das Gupta, who was the assistant of Robert Knowles. Dr Das Gupta maintained the species by serial passage in monkeys until Dr Knowles returned from leave. In 1932, Knowles and Das Gupta described the species in detail for the first time and showed that it could be transmitted to man by blood passage, but failed to name it. It was named by Sinton and Mulligan in 1932 after Dr Knowles. From early in the 1930s to 1955, P. knowlesi was used as a pyretic agent for the treatment of patients with neurosyphillis.
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