The international group of scientists recorded the steady form of malaria in Uganda, which is able to resist the widestly used medicine. This is reported in the article published in the magazine New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers analyzed blood samples in patients who received Artemisinin – the main drug against malaria. It turned out that by 2019, almost 20 percent of the malarious plasmodium samples had genetic mutations that make treatment ineffective. Tests have shown that patients needed much longer to get rid of parasites causing malaria.
Drug-resistant malaria forms were previously discovered in Asia, and some strains invulnerable to drugs were registered in Rwanda. A new study showed that particularly dangerous malaria arose in Uganda, which indicates the possibility of cross-border spread of Africa in the future. In the past, a similar picture was observed in Cambodia, after which the malaria spread across Asian countries.
It is assumed that instead of a standard approach, when one or two drugs are used in conjunction with Artemisinin, doctors now have to use three, as is often done in the treatment of tuberculosis and HIV.
Malaria spreads through mosquito bites and more than 400 thousand people kills annually, mostly children under five years and pregnant women.