Figure 1.

Life cycle of Plasmodium falciparum. The life cycle of parasite P. falciparum starts in human with inoculation of parasite through mosquito. From the site of injection, sporozoite (SPZ) reaches to the liver and infect hepatocytes. The SPZ multiplies and produces thousands of blood stage infective merozoites. These merozoites enter the blood stream and infect the RBCs to start the erythrocytic cycle of parasite. In RBC, they go through different stages of development before they release the merozoites to infect new RBCs. A small percentage of asexual parasite transforms into sexual form, i.e., gametocytes, which finally develop into sporozoites in the mosquitoes.