South African researchers have made a breakthrough in malaria research that will enable more effective drugs to be developed to treat the parasite-based infection, a medical researcher said on Sunday.
The breakthrough was based on identifying how the malaria parasite handles iron in red blood cells, said Giovanni Hearne, a doctor at the Wits University’s Medical School in Johannesburg.
”The parasite feeds on haemoglobin in red blood cells and destroys their oxygen-carrying capacity,” Hearne, who was part of a team of researchers who made the discovery, told a Johannesburg-based Sunday newspaper.
”Part of the haemoglobin called haem is potentially toxic to the parasite. Our breakthrough centres on the discovery that the parasite manages to disable the toxic haem by converting it into another substance called haemozin,” he said.
”New drugs can now be designed to block this detoxification pathway so the haem remains deadly,” Hearne said.
Team leader, Tim Egan said that the anti-malarial drug chloroquine probably blocked the detoxification pathway.
Chloroquine is no longer effective because of the parasite’s increased resistance to it.
Malaria is transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected female anopheles mosquito and is a huge problem worldwide, particularly in Africa.
Every year, it kills up to three million people, mainly babies, and causes up to 200 million infections, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics. – Sapa-AFP