This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
Drug-resistant malaria threatens to spread from Burma, say researchers
Sorry - this page has been removed.
(1 day later)
Malaria with total resistance to the antimalarial drug artemisinin has taken hold in Burma and spread close to the border with India, threatening to render crucial medicines useless, scientists have warned.
This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason.
If the resistant parasite reached India it would pose a serious threat to the chances of global control and eradication of the killer mosquito-borne disease, said Charles Woodrow of the Mahidol-Oxford tropical medicine research unit.
And if resistance spread from Asia to Africa, or emerges in Africa independently – as has been seen before with previously effective but now powerless antimalarials – “millions of lives will be at risk”, they said in a report.
For further information, please contact:
“[Burma] is considered the front line in the battle against artemisinin resistance as it forms a gateway for resistance to spread to the rest of the world,” said Woodrow, who led the Oxford study.
In a study published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, Woodrow’s team collected 940 parasite samples at 55 malaria treatment centres across Burma and its border regions. They found that almost 40% of the samples had mutations signalling artemisinin resistance.
They also confirmed resistant parasites in Homalin, in the Sagaing region, 15 miles (25km) from the Indian border.
While there have been significant reductions in malaria infection it still kills around 600,000 people a year – most of them children in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
From the late 1950s to the 1970s chloroquine-resistant malaria spread across Asia to Africa, leading to millions of deaths.
Chloroquine was replaced by sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), but resistance to SP subsequently emerged in western Cambodia and again spread to Africa. SP was replaced by artemisinin combination treatment, or ACT, and experts now worry it is losing effect.
“The pace at which artemisinin resistance is spreading or emerging is alarming,” said Philippe Guerin, director of the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network.
Woodrow noted that thanks to advances in the science of genetic analysis, researchers tracking artemisinin antimalarials were in “the unusual position of having molecular markers for resistance before resistance has spread globally”.
“The more we understand about the current situation … the better prepared we are to adapt and implement strategies to overcome the spread of further drug resistance,” he said.
