QUESTION

Why can’t mosquitoes become sick of malaria? What do they have in their system that prevent them from becoming sick yet they transmit the disease to humans?

ANSWER

First of all, mosquitoes do get “sick” when infected with malaria, though not in the same way as humans. This is due to the major differences between human and mosquito physiology and also differences in the life stage of the malaria parasite between the different hosts.

Humans get sick from malaria because the malaria parasite, when inside the human host, sequentially infects red blood cells, multiplying inside them and then destroying them. This process of destruction and the resultant debris in the blood results fever and other symptoms (some of which are exacerbated by the body’s immune response).

Mosquitoes are insects, and do not have blood in the same way as humans. Instead, in the mosquito, the malaria parasites differentiate into male and female life stages (called gametocytes) which fuse into the mosquitoes gut. After further reproduction, they eventually produce sporozoites that rupture out of the mosquito gut wall and migrate to the salivary glands, where they can be infected into a new human host.  

Mosquitoes also have a very different immune system to humans, and so the concept of “sick” is not the same for them as for humans. However, there is a lot of evidence that infection with malaria results in reduced reproductive success for the mosquito, as well as lower survival. This could be due to protective responses on the part of the mosquito, but also could be mediated by the malaria parasite, by diverted resources towards its own development that could have been used for mosquito reproduction or survival.