A pair of studies published in The Lancet and the journal Science showed how the disease is moving fast into new territory and identified a region of the parasite’s genome that may be responsible for mutating in order to survive.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease commonly caused by a parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, that kills up to 1.2 million people a year, according to 2010 estimates by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Malaria that was resistant to treatment with the current standard therapy, artemisinin, was confirmed in Cambodia in 2006 and has since surged 800 kilometers (500 miles) westward to the Thailand-Myanmar border, the researchers said.
The death toll from malaria has been declining in Africa — the part of the world worst hit by the disease — in recent years, largely due to the increased use of artemisinin drugs and the widening distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets.
But if resistance spreads to artemisinin therapies — used alone or taken in combination with other anti-malarials — some experts are concerned that a resurgence of drug-resistant malaria could return to Africa.