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Drug-Resistant Malaria May Pose Major Threat

Posted by timothy on from the not-just-crazy-dream-pills dept.

According to Newsweek, "A strain of drug-resistant malaria that was discovered last summer along the Thailand-Cambodia border has been been spreading throughout Southeast Asia, to Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar." Specifically, the samples are resistant to anti-malarial artemisinin. The study analyzed more than 900 blood samples from malaria patients at over 55 different sites in Myanmar. The results showed that the drug-resistant bug was widespread, and dangerously close to the Indian border in the country’s Sagaing region. "Our study shows that artemisinin resistance extends over more of southeast Asia than had previously been known, and is now present close to the border with India,” wrote the researchers in the study abstract.

3 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Re:One of these days Mother Nature is going to dec by BoRegardless · · Score: 4, Informative

    Indeed, major pandemics have been documented throughout the last 2000 years. Air travel today, just means they happen much faster.

    The average person thinks modern medicine and hospitals can "take care of everything" but plans can't be made when a pandemic strikes 20 or 25% of the population who all want to go to the hospital in the same time period.

    The WWI-1918 "Spanish Flu" was perhaps the last major pandemic, infecting 1 out of 3 people in the world and killing 10% of the world's population in about 18 months.

  2. Re:Man in the middle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You do realize that you are completely wrong?
    Vaccines are not only for viruses - the very common vaccine Di-Per-Te is a nice sample - it is for three different bacterias.
    Protozoal vaccines are also in use eg. Nobivac Piro.
    Vaccines can be made for every infective agent that represents antibodies - or it's antibodies are represented on cells that are infected by this agent.
    In one aspect you are right: currently there is no vaccine for Malaria.

  3. Re:the samples are resistant to anti-malarial arte by rs79 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "In malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, for example, depletes its host of Vitamin A, possibly resulting in blindness in some cases. However, 200,000 International Units of Vitamin A, given to children every three months can reduce significantly their susceptibility to malaria. This would seem to be a minimum child dosage for the treatment of the disease."

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

    --
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