The rapid spread of "super malaria" in South East Asia is an alarming global threat, scientists are warning. This dangerous form of the malaria parasite cannot be killed with the main anti-malaria drugs. It emerged in Cambodia but has since spread through parts of Thailand, Laos and has arrived in southern Vietnam. The team at the Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok said there was a real danger of malaria becoming untreatable. Prof Arjen Dondorp, the head of the unit, told the BBC News website: "We think it is a serious threat. "It is alarming that this strain is spreading so quickly through the whole region and we fear it can spread further [and eventually] jump to Africa."The news article is based on a letter that appeared in The Lancet Infectious Diseases website this month (October 2017). The letter, quite brief, references four sources, the second of which is referred to as "a sinister development" in which a single dominant artemisinin-resistant P falciparum C580Y mutant lineage has arisen in western Cambodia, outcompeted the other resistant malaria parasites, and subsequently acquired resistance to piperaquine (link). It's a long and detailed scientific article and I'm not competent to assess its validity or significance but I did note that funding for the study came from The Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The multiple authors pointed out that the funder of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report. The corresponding author had full access to all the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.
In fact most of the founding for this Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit comes from The Welcome Trust that describes itself as:
Wellcome exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive.We’re a global charitable foundation, both politically and financially independent. We support scientists and researchers, take on big problems, fuel imaginations, and spark debate.
Disturbingly, the organisation lists vaccine development at the top of its list of types of supported projects. It would not be unreasonable to suspect that, when a news article like this appears, some sort of new antimalarial vaccine might be in preparation. The idea would be to promote the threat of a malaria apocalypse (as opposed to an Ebola or Zika apocalypse) to maximise vaccine sales. There's no such new vaccine promised at the moment, but a vaccine does exist.
The only approved one at the time of writing is RTS,S. It requires four injections, and has a relatively low efficacy (26–50%). Due to low efficacy, WHO does not recommend the use of RTS,S vaccine in babies between 6 and 12 weeks of age. The vaccine is going to be studied further in Africa in 2018. Research continues into recombinant protein and attenuated whole organism vaccines. It was developed by developed by PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Here is a link to an earlier post of mine on a Malaria Vaccine. It seems that this latest article might be an attempt to justify an extension of the trial of the vaccine to South East Asia in addition of Africa. Let's watch developments and see how this alarming global threat unfolds.
Here is a link to an earlier post of mine on a Malaria Vaccine. It seems that this latest article might be an attempt to justify an extension of the trial of the vaccine to South East Asia in addition of Africa. Let's watch developments and see how this alarming global threat unfolds.
