'Breakthrough' in malaria fight

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Australian scientists have identified a potential treatment to combat malaria.

Researchers in Melbourne believe their discovery could be a major breakthrough in the fight against the disease.
The malaria parasite produces a glue-like substance which makes the cells it infects sticky, so they cannot be flushed through the body.
The researchers have shown removing a protein responsible for the glue can destroy its stickiness, and undermine the parasite's defence.
The malaria parasite - Plasmodium falciparum - effectively hijacks the red blood cells it invades, changing their shape and physical properties dramatically.
Among the changes it triggers is the production of the glue-like substance, which enables the infected cells to stick to the walls of the blood vessels.
This stops them being pased through the spleen, where the parasites would usually be destroyed by the immune system.
Painstaking tests
The Australian team developed mutant strains of P. falciparum, each lacking one of 83 genes known or predicted to play a role in the red cell remodeling process.
Systematically testing each one, they were able to show that eight proteins were involved in the production of the key glue-like substance.
Removing just one of these proteins stopped the infected cells from attaching themselves to the walls of blood vessels.
Professor Alan Cowman, a member of the research team at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, said targeting the protein with drugs - or possibly a vaccine - could be key to fighting malaria.
"If we block the stickiness we essentially block the virulence or the capacity of the parasite to cause disease," he said.
Malaria is preventable and curable, but can be fatal if not treated promptly. The disease kills more than a million people each year. Many of the victims are young children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Malaria parasites 'resist drugs'

International scientists say they have found the first evidence of resistance to the world's most effective drug for treating malaria.

They say the trend in western Cambodia has to be urgently contained because full-blown resistance would be a global health catastrophe.
Drugs are taking longer to clear blood of malaria parasites than before.
This is an early warning sign of emerging resistance to a disease which kills a million people every year.
Until now the most effective drug cleared all malaria parasites from the blood within two or three days but in recent trials this took up to four or five days.
It is unclear why the region has become a nursery for the resistance - but the local public health system is weak, and the use of anti-malaria drugs is not properly controlled.
Drug defence
The artemesinin family of drugs is the world's front-line defence against the most prevalent and deadly form of malaria.
Two teams of scientists, working on separate clinical trials, have reported seeing the disturbing evidence that the drugs are becoming much less effective.
There is particular concern because previous generations of malaria drugs have been undermined by resistance which started in this way, in this part of the world, our correspondent reports.
The World Health Organization warned in 2006 there was a possibility the malaria parasite could develop a resistance to artemesinin drugs, and that there was particular concern about a decreased sensitivity to the drug being seen in South East Asia.
It urged drug firms to stop selling artemesinin on its own in order to prevent resistance building up.
Early results from two studies by US and UK teams have both revealed the early stages of resistance.
Between a third and a half of patients in the US study saw delayed clearance of the malaria parasite.
In the UK study, patients in the Cambodia arm of the trial took almost twice as long to clear the parasite as a comparison group in Thailand.
Professor Nick Day, director of the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit which is carrying out the UK study, said: "Twice in the past, South East Asia has made a gift, unwittingly, of drug resistant parasites to the rest of the world, in particular to Africa," he said.
"That's the problem. We've had chloroquine and SP (sulfadoxine pyrimethamine) resistance, both of which have caused major loss of life in Africa," he said in reference to earlier generation anti-malarial drugs.
"If the same thing happens again, the spread of a resistant parasite from Asia to Africa, that will have devastating consequences for malaria control," he said.
Prof Brian Greenwood, Professor of Tropical Medicine (Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine (Oxford Handbooks Series)) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, described the findings as a matter for concern, even though treatment still worked if a full course of artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) was taken.
"There is currently no need for panic but it would be serious if these partially resistant parasites reached Africa where great gains in malaria control are currently being made using ACTs and insecticide-treated bed nets," he said.
Health systems
Cambodia has long been a laboratory for malaria investigators and a nursery of anti-malaria drug resistance.
Alongside a weak public health system and poorly-controlled drug use, there are many fake drugs, produced by international criminals.
These fakes often contain a small amount of the real drug to fool tests, which can also help to fuel resistance.
Those working to control malaria are calling for urgent action to contain this emerging resistance.
If it strengthens and spreads, they warn, many millions of lives will be at risk. About half the world's population faces exposure to the disease.