The Lancet Infectious Diseases: Scientists identify genetic markers of resistance to frontline malaria drug that could help control outbreaks

Scientists have identified genetic markers associated with resistance to the one of the most commonly used malaria drugs in Southeast Asia. The findings of two independent studies from Cambodia, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, could be used to help track and contain the spread of drug-resistant disease in the region. The researchers found that Plasmodium falciparum, the most common species of malaria parasites, with multiple copies (amplification) of the plasmepsin 2 and plasmepsin 3 genes and the exo-E415G variant, was less sensitive to the antimalarial drug piperaquine and could identify with high accuracy which patients would fail treatment. However, more research is needed to establish whether plasmepsin gene amplification actually causes piperaquine resistance and to explore whether this association extends to other parts of the world. More than 200 million people are infected with P falciparum, which kills around half a million people every year. Worldwide, antimalarial control efforts are mainly dependent...