Superparasitas malaria are a threat to global disease control
By Science
Multiresistant malaria parasites to drugs already taken account of parts of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, threatening to undermine progress in combating this disease - scientists warn.
Malaria parasites that resist the best drugs we have today - artemisinin and piperaquine - are already scattered throughout Cambodia. And even more parasites than those adapted to resist the drugs are spread by the Laos Southeast and the Northeast of Thailand.
"We are losing a dangerous race to eliminate resistant malaria artemisinin before resistance spreads to other antimalarial drugs and make this impossible," says Nicholas White of the University of Oxford (Great Britain) and the University of Mahidol ( Thailand), who co-led this research published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases . "The consequences of the spread of resistance to India and Africa can be very serious if the problem is not attacked in a global public health emergency of perspective."
More than half the world's population is at risk of malaria infection. Most of those infected with the malaria parasite (the Plasmodium ) are children under five living in the poorest areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
In recent times, the progress against this disease transmitted by mosquitoes (the Anopheles) have been huge and the numbers of those who get sick have had major reductions, yet malaria kills more than 420,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organization .
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Malaria experts believe that the emergence of drug resistance in Asia is now one of the most serious threats to progress in the fight against the disease.
Between the late 50s and 70s, parasites resistant to chloroquine malaria spread throughout Asia and then to Africa, leading to the resurgence of malaria cases and millions of deaths. Chloroquine was then replaced by sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, but subsequent resistance to these substances emerged in Western Cambodia and, once again spread to Africa. The fear now is that appears the same pattern of spread of resistance and resurgence of malaria happen again.
"We see that is emerging a line of very successful parasites resistant, outperforming their peers and spreading over a vast area," stresses Arjen Dondorp, the Mahidol-Oxford Research Unit Tropical Medicine in Thailand, who also co -liderou this investigation.
Efforts to control malaria in Asia need to be urgently stepped up "before they get close to the untreatable." In their study in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases , the scientists said, after they analyzed blood samples from Cambodia sick, Laos, Thailand and Burma, found that a single strain of mutant parasites - known as PfKelch13 C580Y - already spread over three countries, replacing the parasites that had other mutations less resistant to artemisinin. The team explains that the C580Y mutation does not necessarily make them more resistant parasites to drugs, but the parasites have other characteristics that make them more dangerous - in particular, seem to adapt better to transmit more easily and be able to disseminate more broadly.
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