International team of scientists studies malaria drug resistance in Southeast Asia

August 2, 2014

Researchers from, , , and the  have mapped resistance of -causing parasite  to antimalarial drug , mainly in ; correlated the resistance-causing mutation with slow parasite ; and found that prolonged therapy is highly effective against drug-resistant malaria. Their study was published in on Thursday.

The mutation considered in this study was identified last year as the of artemisinin-resistant malaria. The current study found the mutation, located in the of a  on, predicted when parasite clearance  would exceed five hours with  &mdash; usually correct in predicting both when long half-life would occur, and when it wouldn't.  web-based database was used for collection of data which was used to assess parasite clearance rate.

The study found a six-day treatment course effective against artemisinin-resistant malaria. The standard regimen consists of three-day – treatment, and had a 25% rate of failure at day 42 in another recent study in,. The prolonged regimen which includes three days of followed by three days of dihydroartemisinin–piperaquine, has shown 2% rate of failure at day 42 in the same area. of the half-life values were similar in two treatment groups of 60 patients each at each study site: one group received at a daily dose of 2  per patient's body-weight  and the other 4 mg per kilogram. Afterwards, patients at several study sites were followed for 42 days &mdash; Pailin, Cambodia;, ; , ; Shwe Kyin, ; and Pingilikani, &mdash; and for 28 days in ,. The treatment regimens were highly effective at all the study sites.

Support for the study came from the, the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network, the  of the  of the , and the. Also, the UK-based funds one of the participating research organizations, the – Tropical Medicine Research Programme.