e 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 artemisin in 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 drug resistant, 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”cnbc”