‘Music To My Ears’: New Malaria Drug Succeeds In Large Clinical Trial To Combat Resistance

‘Music To My Ears’: New Malaria Drug Succeeds In Large Clinical Trial To Combat Resistance

‘Music To My Ears’: New Malaria Drug Succeeds In Large Clinical Trial To Combat Resistance Dunpharlain, CC license Among the world’s manifold disease burdens, antibiotic resistant bacteria hold a special place of concern. But recent evidence points to the malaria parasite also developing resistance to drugs that have been working to killed it off for the last quarter-century. Therefore, news that a major drug trial looking at the efficacy of a new-class of antimalarial medication called KLU156 found it was just as reliable as exiting treatments will come as a major sigh of relief. Existing frontline malaria medication is based on a plant-extract from sweet wormwood called artemisinin, combined with other compounds. The resulting ACT (Artemisinin-based combination therapies), has been recommended as an antimalarial medication since 2001. Its discovery yielded Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, who synthesized artemisinin from sweet wormwood in the 1970s, a Nobel Prize in 2015. It also forever for…