Correlation Between Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia

Student: Mia Ola
Category: Class Project

Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia are both diseases that affect the blood, even though they are biologically different. Malaria is caused by a parasitic plasmodium called P. Malariae that lives in red blood cells in humans. The plasmodium lives in the blood cells and continues to replicate until eventually exploding the cell. Sickle cell anemia is a genetic disorder which causes people to have abnormally shaped hemoglobin in their red blood cells. Through analyzation of correlative data, I discovered that malaria and sickle cell anemia, though different diseases, do affect each other. Since sickled cells are abnormally shaped, the plasmodia can’t enter the cell, thus, they won’t explode it. Something that researchers are also finding is that sickled cells release a level of carbon dioxide that is lethal to the plasmodia that cause malaria. This means that when sickle cell anemia is present in its heterozygous form, it can be advantageous against malaria. These findings are important because even though the two diseases are deadly by themselves, understanding how they correlate could open new doors for researchers to cure them.