Malaria has long been plaguing countries in Southeast Asia but the problem with the disease has now taken a more serious turn. A group of researchers said that drug-resistant malaria parasites are spreading in the region and this could pose threats to global efforts to eliminate the disease.
Malaria, which is marked by symptoms that include fever, chills, nausea and headache, is an infectious disease caused by a parasite that is transmitted through the bite of an infected Anopheles female mosquito. The disease affects about 207 million people worldwide and is responsible for about 627,000 deaths in 2012, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Because no vaccine is yet available to prevent malaria infection, people in malaria endemic areas protect themselves by eliminating breeding grounds of mosquitoes and preventing mosquito bites by using mosquito nets and repelling products.
For the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 31, Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network chair Nicholas White and colleagues analyzed the blood samples of over 1,200 malaria patients from seven countries in Asia and three countries in Africa and found that the malaria-causing parasite has become increasingly resistant to artemisinin, which to date is the most effective antimalarial drug.
The researchers found that resistance to the drug is now widespread in several countries in Southeast Asia particularly in Thailand, Vietnam, western Cambodia and eastern Myanmar. The researchers also said that there are signs of emerging resistance in northeastern Cambodia, central Myanmar and southern Laos albeit they did not find signs of resistance in African countries Congo, Kenya and Nigeria.
"Artemisinin resistance to P. falciparum, which is now prevalent across mainland Southeast Asia, is associated with mutations inkelch13," the researchers wrote. "Prolonged courses of artemisinin-based combination therapies are currently efficacious in areas where standard 3-day treatments are failing."
Wellcome Trust director Jeremy Farrar said that if the resistance spreads into Africa, the progress that has been made to reduce the number of malaria-related deaths will be reversed. White said that the prevalence of drug-resistant malaria is worse than they had expected and said that radical action is needed to prevent it from spreading any further.
"It may still be possible to prevent the spread of artemisinin-resistant malaria parasites across Asia and then to Africa by eliminating them," White said. "Conventional malaria control approaches won't be enough - we will need to take more radical action and make this a global public health priority, without delay."
