Malaria is one of the world's deadliest diseases and affects about 60 million people worldwide.

While reasonable steps have been taken over the years to help prevent malaria, the nature of its persistent insect host, the mosquito, makes it difficult to stop, primarily in the poorest countries of the world.

Like Us on Facebook

Now, a team of scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have discovered precisely how the malaria parasite develops a resistance towards the most common drug used to treat the disease.

Knowing the mechanism the malaria parasite uses to develop drug resistance will help healthcare workers better treat patients infected by the disease, said NTU Professor Zbynek Bozdech, who also led the research team.

Bozdech's team from NTU's School of Biological Sciences used a cost-effective microarray technique to analyze 1,000 malaria samples taken from patients in the area of Greater Mekong Subregion, which includes countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.

Interestingly, almost all the malaria parasites found in Cambodia and nearby regions had mutated and further developed resistance to Artemisinin, the main drug used for the treatment of the disease.

To exactly determine what the parasite cells do to protect themselves from Artemisinin, the team used their own customized technique to correlate clinical data from the 1,000 samples with functional genomic results, said Prof. Bozdech.

The malaria parasite has two major ways by which it becomes resistant to the drug. First, the parasite increased its capacity to repair the damage caused by the drug, thereby giving it a higher chance of survival.

Second, because Artemisinin is more effective in the malaria virus' earlier stage of development, the parasite slowed down its build-up so it could survive in the younger stages.

The study findings published in the journal, Science, can help doctors design new strategies for drug treatments. It can also give scientists and governments useful ideas on how to monitor the drug resistance of the malaria parasite to develop more effective ways to fight the disease.

TagsMalaria, Malaria drug resistance