December 6, 2005
And now for some really bad news
You have to admire its resilience. The ever-resourceful malaria parasite is already finding a way round Artemisinin, widely thought to be the strongest existing anti-malaria treatment, according to this report in Scidev.net.
There is no cause for immediate panic in Ethiopia. The Artemisinin that is currently being imported into the country is being used in combination with other treatments as an "artemisinin-based combination therapy" (ACT - commercial brand name 'Coartem') which has so far not given in to the parasite.
But, according to Ronan Jambou, who led the team which discovered the vulnerability at the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal, the news suggests Coartem's shelf life is limited. According to the SciDev report:
He [added] that the parasite's resistance to artemisinin should be carefully monitored to avoid a repetition of what happened with chloroquine."Forty years separated the first description of chloroquine resistance from its withdrawal. We think that we have time [to avoid widespread resistance] if we use these compounds carefully."
The malaria arms race continues.
Posted by aheavens at December 6, 2005 8:15 AM