New study raises concern over drug-resistant malaria
A pocket of drug-resistant malaria that health officials had hoped to contain to a small area in Southwest Asia has spread and worsened, raising fears of a virtually untreatable disease that could spread into India and Africa and kill millions, researchers in San Antonio and Thailand reported Thursday.
But in a separate report to be published Friday, the same scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute offered a bit of hope — by identifying the genetic regions on the malaria parasite that lead it to evade treatment in the first place.
Malaria deaths have declined worldwide by almost a third over the past decade thanks to a drug cocktail containing artemisinin, a malaria treatment developed in China. But a malaria strain resistant to artemisinin surfaced on the Cambodia-Thailand border in 2008.
Last year, Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, announced a major international campaign to contain it there.
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