Malaria kills more than half a million people per year, most of them small children. A new kind of antimalarial treatment: artemisinin-based combination therapies, or ACTs, that replaced older drugs like chloroquine, has successfully saved millions of lives in Africa.
Used as a first-line treatment, ACTs have averted a significant number of malaria deaths since their introduction in the early 2000s. ACTs pair a derivative of the drug artemisinin with one of five partner drugs or drug combinations. Delivered together, the fast-acting artemisinin component wipes out most of the parasites within a few days, and the longer-acting partner drug clears out the stragglers.
ACTs quickly became a mainstay in malaria treatment. But in 2009, researchers observed signs of resistance to artemisinin along the Thailand-Cambodia border. With more studies, scientists have confirmed the emergence of artemisinin resistance in Africa. This can cause malaria reemerging and can be really detrimental to the global health. Researchers have remained on the lookout for signs that the malaria parasite is evolving to resist artemisinin or its partner drugs, planning to run therapeutic efficacy study, which involves closely monitoring infected patients as they are treated with antimalarial drugs, to see how well the drugs perform and if there are any signs of resistance.
#reemergingdiseases
--Wenqi
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