14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists analyzed the genomic features of a Peruvian parasite population and found the genetic basis for the malaria parasite resistance to a common antibiotic, which gave them new ideas on how to improve the diagnosis efficiency and treatment.
Malaria is a death-causing disease that makes over one million victims a year worldwide, and as the drug-resistant malaria egresses, there is urgency in coming up with another treatment, more efficient than simple antibiotics.
In the mid-20th century, the World Health Organization made serious efforts to eliminate the disease and managed to have significant progress, until the 1990s, when drug-resistant parasites emerged and malaria cases rose.
Elizabeth Winzeler, a researcher at the The Scripps Research Institute and her colleagues from the United States and Peru analyzed malaria-causing Plasmodium falciparum in Iquitos, a city in the Amazonian lowlands of Peru, because the disease was eradicated in the 1960s but reappeared in the 1990s.
With this study they were hoping to find out more about the genetic basis of drug resistance, so they scanned and compared variations of the P. falciparum genome isolated from 14 patients.
What they found was that the malaria parasites from Iquitos were closely related, with some parasites being almost clones of each other, e! Science News reports.
Winzeler said that this came as a surprise, as they did not expect to find such homogeneity within these parasite populations.
She explained that even if the similarities were high, the team managed to find a serious genetic instability in areas near the telomere - the repetitive DNA sequences that protects the ends of chromosomes.
For this reason, the tests for malaria detection which are based on finding a protein encoded by a subtelomeric gene, might miss diagnoses.
Another important finding that could alter the course of treatment for some patients is a mutation found in a non-coding RNA gene that could give resistance to the antibiotic clindamycin.
The researchers tested the Peruvian samples for clindamycin resistance and the result was positive, so the lincosamide drug commonly administered in combination with quinine to treat pregnant women and infants for malaria in Peru, has to be replaced as it can no longer be considered efficient.
“This was exciting as it was the first demonstrated case of clindamycin resistance,” said Winzeler.
“The data also show parasites could be resistant to related compounds, such as mirincamycin, that are under development.”
“Our findings emphasize the importance of placing new antimalarial compounds in the drug development pipeline,” she added, “especially compounds with novel mechanisms of actions.”