Malaria Adaptation: Biological, Cultural and Environmental Factors

Running head: CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Cultural Anthropology
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1CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Malaria is a vector-borne disease that affects a huge number of population around the
world. The disease is caused by the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which is
transmitted by the mosquito. The wild type disease was found in sub-Saharan Africa almost
42000 years ago (Price, 2018). Till then, the disease causes various changes in human genome
and as well as affect the evolution of human. In addition to this, several cultural factors like
environmental changes, inheritance of various beliefs and practices, and as well as social systems
have contributed to then adaptation of malaria in human. In this essay, the biological and as well
as the cultural factors of malaria adaptation is discussed briefly.
Malaria is assumed to be a one of the strongest factor for the evolutionary selection in the
history of human evolution. Malarial adaptation has caused in the change in the human genomic
level. It is seen that the HbS allele has increased in numbers in the population who have already
exposed to the disease. Although there was cases of mortality. Along with this different
population around the world has developed various evolutionary changes in response to the
exposure of malaria. For example, the HBB gene has 3 coding SNPs to prevent malaria. They are
Glu6Val ( HbS), Glu6Lys ( HbC), Glu26Lys (HbE). The HbS is mainly popular in the African
region, but it is not found in the Southeast Asia. In addition to global differentiation, local gene
pool also showed significant difference in Africa. Presence of different malaria-resistance gene
in different places suggested that evolutionary changes has occurred by the effect of
malaria(Taylor, Cerami & Fairhurst, 2013). The haplotype analysis and the statistical modelling
of G6PD locus indicates that the origin was 10000 years old. Analysis of 100 mtDNA showed
that the parasite of the malaria have already existed 100,000 years ago. Although the malaria
parasite of Africa had increased almost 10,000 years ago and slowly expanded in various area
around the world. This result along with the analysis of polytene chromosome have proved the

2CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
fact that the malaria parasite acted as the reservoir during the evolutionary procedure of human
(Mangano & Modiano, 2014). The variation in the genetic component also suggested towards the
matter genetic component of the individual showed various immunological responses against the
disease. In relation to this, it can be seen that different ethnic population has evolved different
resistance against malaria during the evolutionary process. Although, it is also documented that
the ethnic groups who lived in the same region also had different resistance to the malaria. For
example, Fulani population are mainly found in the West Africa and lived with other ethnic
population. It had observed that, the Fulani population had low rate of malaria prevalence in
comparison to other ethnic population lived in that region. Detailed epidemiological studies
showed that the resistance against the malaria in Fulani population had come due to genetical
evolution that is genetical changes in response to malaria. The Fulani population had more
number of antimalarial antibodies and along with this increased amount of IL-4 is also
responsible for the protection of malaria (Cherif et al., 2016). In that study, it was revealed that ,
the IL4-524 T allele was responsible for the high level of antibody against malaria antigen
(Calixto Fernandes,2013). In a malaria endemic region, one of the most common genetical
alteration was onset of sickle cell anemia. The mutation of sickle cell anemia is a recessive
disease that is the disease is found only in the people who two copies of altered gene. The
carriers, that is the person who have only one copy of altered gene, showed resistance to malaria.
This phenomenon is known as heterozygote advantage. The alteration is closely associated with
the human evolutionary process (Gong et al., 2016).
Environmental changes mainly the climatic changes cause alteration in the vector borne
diseases like malaria. With global climatic change, the concern of disease dynamics has changed
globally. The vector of malaria and the parasite responsible for the disease are very much