Abstract:
The introduction of artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) substantially reduced malaria-
related mortality and morbidity during the past two decade. However, there is limited
information on ACT effectiveness in routine health care when treatment is not monitored.
Malaria patients infected by multiple parasite strains have been shown to be high risk of
treatment failure. Genetically distinct malaria parasites in natural population have an extremely
high rate of recombination during sexual stage in mosquito gut during zygote formation,
resulting in gene variations of P. falciparum. Because of this variation, the conformation of anti
malarial drug targets is altered and then renders the parasite drug resistant which hinders the
outcome of malaria treatment. Hence, broad understanding of the genetic variations of the
parasite population can contribute to the definition of control measures including an appropriate
anti-malarial treatment
