ABOVE: IN THE BLOOD: Red blood cells infected with a malaria parasite (purple) circulate with uninfected RBCs (gray).
© ISTOCK.COM, JARUN011
It’s not clear why, but the Greater Mekong Subregion—Cambodia, southern China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam—is a major source of malaria drug resistance. Each time a drug has been deployed in the area, resistance mutations in local Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the mosquito-borne disease, have followed close behind. Parasites there seem more adaptable than P. falciparum in other regions, says Thanat Chookajorn, an assistant professor of biochemistry at Mahidol University in Thailand, who studies the molecular genetics of malaria parasites that thrive in the Greater Mekong.
“It sounds kind of self-centered to say, ‘My parasite’s the worst in the world,’” Chookajorn says. “But I would say that there’s definitely something funny going on with this population.”
Resistance to chloroquine, the first widely used antimalarial drug, first arose in ...
