Question

In which stage of paroxysm of malaria, fever occurs?
A. Rigor stage
B. Febrile stage
C. Defervescence stage
D. All of the above.

Answer 1

Hint: Malaria paroxysm generally happens in three stages. Starts from mild fever-like feelings or flu-like symptoms and then fever attacks. And the third and last stage is cooling down of body temperature which was raised due to fever attacks.

Complete answer:
We all know that malaria is caused by the bite of female mosquitoes of genus Anopheles. Anopheles is a carrier of protozoa of genus Plasmodium. There are different species involved in causing malaria to humans are P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. malariae. These protozoa cause malaria in humans, reptiles, and other vertebrates.
Malaria paroxysm occurs in three stages:
1. First is the rigor stage characterized by cold feeling, shivering and flu-like symptoms.
2. Then after 48 or 72 hours of infection we feel high temperature fever ranging from 380 C to 410 C. This stage is called febrile stage and in this stage fever attacks happen to patients. Patients also feel headache, nausea, dry skin and flushes.
3. Finally, the last stage is the defense stage. In this stage sweating starts and fever starts decreasing and patients sweat a-lot.
There are no specific symptoms of malaria except fever. During malarial infection one can also go through hepatomegaly, jaundice, hypotension and abdominal tenderness. Although, vaccination has already been developed for malaria but still every year one million to 2.5 million deaths are due to malaria. So, it is very important to have a diagnosis and treatment.
Many other complications may also develop due to malaria if not treated on time like cerebral malaria, severe anemia, hyperparasitemia, lactic acidosis and others. Persona which are at major risk are old age persons, children, pregnant women, nonimmune persons and persons with chronic diseases.

So, discussing all points, we can conclude that Option ‘B’ is correct, that the febrile stage is the stage in which patients feel fever.

Note:
Different protozoa infect different organisms. Like, P. vivax causes malaria in humans. Thus, we cannot generalize processes for all organisms and we have scientific and experimental data for only humans.