Plasmodium falciparum resistance to artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) started to crop up around 2007. Infections, especially in the Greater Mekong area of Southeast Asia, seemingly survived treatment. This was largely due to the pairing of artemisinin derivatives with older drugs that had existing resistance problems. But some experts think the emergence of partial resistance to artemisinin itself—which allows parasites to persist for longer in the body following treatment—could also play a role.
Plasmodium falciparum resistance to artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) started to crop up around 2007. This largely arose from pairing artemisinin derivatives with older drugs that had existing resistance problems. But the emergence of partial resistance to artemisinin itself—which allows parasites to persist for longer in the body following treatment—may also play a role.
Researchers have linked partial resistance to artemisinin-derived drugs with several mutations in the kelch13 gene, which encodes a binding protein whose role in the parasite’s ...
