Malaria superbugs spreading fast in Asia

Multidrug-resistant malaria superbugs have taken hold in parts of Thailand, Laos and

Cambodia, threatening to undermine progress against the disease, scientists said. They also

warned of further spread of these parasites through India to Africa.

The superbugs can beat off the best current treatments, artemisinin and piperaquine. “The

emergence and spread of artemisinin drug resistant P falciparum lineage represents a serious

threat to global malaria control. We are losing a dangerous race,“ said Nicholas White, a

professor at Ox ford University and Mahidol University in Thailand, who co-led the research.

Malaria kills more than 420,000 people each year. Most victims are children under five living

in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Malaria specialists said emerging drug resistance in Asia was now one of the most serious

threats to that progress. From the late 1950s to the 1970s, chloroquine-resistant malaria

parasites spread across Asia and then into 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. In their study in the Lancet

Infectious Diseases journal, the scientists said that after examining blood samples from

malaria patients in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, they found that a single mutant

parasite lineage, known as PfKelch13 C580Y, has spread across three countries.

They explained that while the C580Y mutation does not necessarily make the parasite more

drugresistant, it does have other qualities that make it more risky -notably it appears to be

fitter, more transmissible and able to spreading more widely.

Source: The Times of India