SCIENTISTS at Oxford University have discovered that a malaria parasite is evolving rapidly to defend itself against widely-used antimalarial drugs.
The parasite Plasmodium vivax is mainly found in Asia and South America, and 2.5 billion people are at risk of infection worldwide.
An international team of researchers led by Professor Dominic Kwiatkowski from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University, studied the genomes of more than 200 parasite samples from locations across Southeast Asia, identifying the strains carried by each patient and revealing their infection history.
Researchers found that the parasites were evolving rapidly to evade anti-malarial drugs.
Professor Kwiatkowski said: "For so long, it's not been possible to study P. vivax genomes in detail, on a large-scale, but now we can - and we're seeing the effect that drug use has on how parasites are evolving.
"In the near future, genomic data will provide more powerful surveillance tools to those who are trying to tackle these problems and make decisions about how to control and eliminate malaria."
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