London, 6 APR (EFE).-the malaria parasite is progressively increasing its resistance to the most common drug used globally to combat its effects, based on the Chinese plant Artemisia annua, today publishes the medical journal “The Lancet”.
Magazine contains a study showing that the parasite plasmodium, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, has increased its resistance to the treatments of artemisinin on the border between Thailand and Burma.
This area is more than 800 kilometres of another, in Cambodia, where has also detected that reduction in the effectiveness of the remedy, which would indicate that the strains that are resistant to this are spreading.
Researchers of the Shoklo malaria research unit, in Thailand, measured in that border area time who took drugs with artemisinin to eliminate blood flow of 3,000 patients malaria parasites.
Over a period of nine years, from 2001 to 2010, found that these drugs were less effective, and the number of patients showing signs of resistance increased by 20 percent.
The experts warn that if this resistance stretches Southeast Asia and is also transferred to sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of the cases of malaria occur the situation would be serious, since that would reduce the chances of cure the disease that could proliferate.
Professor Texas Biomedical Research Institute’s Standwell Nkhoma, also part of the study, said that if loss of artemisinin, the treatment recommended by the World Health Organization (who), “no other drugs in preparation to replace”.
“Could go back 15 years, when cases of malaria were very difficult to treat due to the lack of effective medicines,” said.
According to the latest global report on malaria, some 655,000 people died in 2010 disease – more than one per minute-, mostly children and pregnant women. EFE
