Researchers have found multiresistant forms of Plasmodium fa | Figure 1

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Researchers have found multiresistant forms of Plasmodium falciparum that have developed even higher levels of antimalarial drug resistance and are now rapidly spreading in Southeast Asia.

The results come from two new studies published in Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The multi-country randomized clinical trial found that the spread of multiresistant parasites caused malaria treatment failure with the combination of first-line dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DHA-PPQ) drugs in half of the cases (50.0%; CI 95% 41.1-58.3) in western and northeastern Cambodia, northeast Thailand and southwest Vietnam over the 2015-2018 time period.

The genomic epidemiology study showed that by 2016-2018, Plasmodium falciparum represented over 80 per cent of parasites circulating in northeastern Thailand and Vietnam, although they only emerged in western Cambodia in 2008.

The findings underscore the urgent need to eliminate this parasite collapse with increasing drug resistance, and the importance of genetic surveillance in accelerating malaria elimination efforts, the researchers said.

At this time, they call for the abandonment of DHA-PPQ use in affected countries. An accelerated malaria elimination program is needed to prevent resistant malaria from spreading further and trigger a global health emergency, similar to the one in which millions of chloroquine resistant malaria died in the 1980s.

Source: Lancet Infectious Diseases.

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