An Inside Look At The Labs Where Doctors Intentionally Infect People With Malaria, University of Washington Study

One bite from an infected mosquito gives you a pretty good chance of catching malaria.

But raise the number of infected mosquitoes and — without some sort of prophylactic or experimental vaccine — infection is basically certain.

"Five bites will infect 100% of you," says Dr. Sean Murphy, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine at the University of Washington and an investigator at the Seattle Malaria Clinical Trials Center (MCTC) at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Five infected mosquitoes are enough to deliver a malaria load that will infect basically anyone.

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