Malaria strain makes Mekong gains

An especially drug-resistant type of malaria is becoming dominant in parts of the Mekong region, researchers said yesterday, warning of potentially dire consequences if it makes the leap to India and Africa.

For the last decade scientists and health workers have become increasingly alarmed by the spread of a malaria strain resistant to a key drug used to treat patients: artemisinin.

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It was first detected in western Cambodia in 2007 and has since spread to parts of northeastern Thailand, southern Laos and eastern Myanmar.

Now researchers have also discovered a version of that strain that is not only resistant to two types of drugs, but has muscled out its less dangerous peers to become the dominant variant, according to a paper published yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal.

"What's happened now is that one lineage which arose in western Cambodia, one family of parasites if you like, has effectively beaten all the rest out and has spread," Nicholas White, a specialist from the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in Bangkok, which led the research, told AFP.

So far the dominant lineage has been detected in parts of Cambodia, Thailand and Laos but not Myanmar -- the bridge to South Asia -- although researchers believe it us just a matter of time before it pushes westwards.