2012年4月19日 | EN Emerging resistance to artemisinin means efforts
to track genetic markers and regulate the drug's use must step
up, says Priya Shetty. When parasites resistant to the anti-
malarial drug artemisinin were discovered along the Thailand-
Cambodia border in 2006, it sparked concern but not panic
because it appeared to be an isolated pocket of resistance. Now,
scientists have found multiple pockets of drug resistance along
the Thailand-Myanmar border, triggering fears that resistance
could spread to the rest of Asia. Worse, it could spread to
Africa, which has 90 per cent of malaria cases, and where public
health systems would soon be overwhelmed if artemisinin became
powerless to control the disease. Artemisinin revolutionised
malaria control when it was rolled out in 2005. Older drugs such
as chloroquine had become largely ineffectual through widespread
resistance, and attempts to prevent infection with insecticide-
treated bednets and indoor spraying were insufficient. The new
findings published in