London. – Tuesday morning the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) reported the failure of a widely-used drug, artemether- lumefantrine (AL), which has been used to treat malaria in the UK.
Four Brits who were diagnosed with malaria were given alternative drugs when their symptoms showed no sign of subsiding on the original failed drug.
Much like news about the sudden spread of the Zika virus, comments from the LSHTM on the news of AL’s ineffectiveness for these four patients is serious enough to cause alarm as Dr. Colin Sutherland told reporters for The Telegraph it was a “potential first sign of drug resistance” for the UK. Such a resistance, which has already been displayed in some parts of south east Asia; could mean that biological researchers would be forced to move very quickly in order to come up with new ways of protecting and preventing the disease against newly-resilient mosquitos.
Sutherland went on to hint at the AL problem being more widespread:
“All the patients were identified by self-referral which suggests more cases of treatment failure in the UK may have occurred.
“A concerted effort to monitor AL outcomes in UK malaria patients needs to be made.
“This will determine whether our front-line malaria treatment drug is under threat.”
“Mutations were found in genes previously implicated in drug failure in Africa and these warrant further investigation as candidate genetic markers for AL susceptibility in Africa, a potential first sign of drug resistance.” – Voice
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