Malaria On The Verge Of Drug Resistance

The first evidence of resistance to the world’s most effective drug for treating malaria has been found by international scientists.

The scientists said that the trend in western Cambodia has to be urgently contained because full-blown resistance would be a global health catastrophe.

Drugs are taking longer than before to clear blood of malaria parasites.

This shows early signs of emerging resistance to a disease that kills a million people each year.

The most effective drug cleared all malaria parasites from the blood within two or three days, until recent trials showed it now takes up to four or five days.

Jill McGivering, a BBC reporter from Cambodia, said that it is unclear why the region has become a nursery for the resistance, but the local public health system is weak, and the use of anti-malaria drugs is not properly controlled.

The world’s front-line defense against the most deadly form of malaria is the artemesinin family of drugs.

Two teams of scientists have reported seeing the distributing evidence that the drugs are becoming less effective.

BBC reported that there is a specific concern because previous generations of malaria resistance has shut down drugs.

In 2006, the World Health Organization warned that there was a possibility that the malaria parasite might develop a resistance to artemesinin drugs, along with a concern about a decreased sensitivity to the drug being seen in South East Asia.

The WHO urged drug firms to quit selling artemesinin drugs in order to stop resistance from building up.

The early stages of resistance were revealed by early results from two studies by both U.S. and U.K. teams.

In the U.S. study, between a third and a half of patients saw delayed clearance of the malaria parasite.

Patients in the Cambodia arm of the trial, in the U.K. study, look almost twice as long to clear the parasite as a comparison group in Thailand.

Director of the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, professor Nick Day, said, "Twice in the past, South East Asia has made a gift, unwittingly, of drug resistant parasites to the rest of the world, in particular to Africa,"

"That’s the problem. We’ve had chloroquine and SP (sulfadoxine pyrimethamine) resistance, both of which have caused major loss of life in Africa," he said in reference to earlier generation anti-malarial drugs.

"If the same thing happens again, the spread of a resistant parasite from Asia to Africa, that will have devastating consequences for malaria control," he said.

Professor of Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Brian Greenwood, said the findings were a matter for concern, even though treatment still worked if a full course of artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) was taken.

"There is currently no need for panic but it would be serious if these partially resistant parasites reached Africa where great gains in malaria control are currently being made using ACTs and insecticide-treated bed nets," he said.

For years Cambodia has been a laboratory for malaria investigators and a nursery of anti-malaria drug resistance.

International criminals produced many fake drugs alongside a weak public health system and poorly controlled drug use.

These fake drugs often contain small amounts of the real drugs to fool tests, which could help fuel the resistance.

Those trying to control malaria are calling for urgent action to contain this emerging resistance.

They warn that if it strengthens and spread then many millions of lives will be at risk.  Around half of the world’s population faces exposure to the disease.