Paper II — 2024 December (Supplementary) (2019 Scheme) — Qxx
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Paper II
2024 December (Supplementary) (2019 Scheme) · 100 marks · 180 min
Question
A: Plasmodium falciparum is the species of Plasmodium producing most serious complications.
R: Malaria is caused by bite of female Anopheles mosquito
a) Both A and R are true and R is the correct explanation of A
c) A is true but R is false
b) Both A and R are true and R is not the correct explanation of A
d) A is false but R is true
Qxx1 marksMCQs
Answer
- [x] b) Both A and R are true and R is not the correct explanation of A
Assertion is true: Plasmodium falciparum is indeed the species producing the most serious complications of malaria (cerebral malaria, severe anaemia, blackwater fever, ARDS, and the highest mortality among the human-infecting Plasmodium species).
Reason is true: malaria is indeed caused by the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito (the vector for all human-infecting Plasmodium species).
However, R does not explain A: the fact that malaria in general is transmitted by the female Anopheles mosquito is a statement about transmission common to all Plasmodium species (P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, P. malariae, P. knowlesi), and does not explain why P. falciparumspecifically causes more severe disease than the other species — that distinction relates instead to species-specific biological features (e.g., P. falciparum’s ability to infect erythrocytes of all ages and cause high parasitaemia, and its capacity for cytoadherence/sequestration in cerebral microvasculature), not to the shared mosquito transmission route. Both statements are independently true but are not causally/explanatorily linked in the manner required for option (a).
