Re-evaluation of How Artemisinins Work in Light of Emerging Evidence of in Vitro Resistance

Overview

Journal Trends Mol Med

Specialties General Medicine
Molecular Biology

Date 2006 Apr 18

PMID 16616639

Citations 27

Authors

Sanjeev Krishna

Charles J Woodrow

Henry M Staines

Richard K Haynes

Odile Mercereau-Puijalon

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

There are more than half a billion cases of malaria every year. Combinations of an artemisinin with other antimalarial drugs are now recommended treatments for Plasmodium falciparum malaria in most endemic areas. These treatment regimens act rapidly to relieve symptoms and effect cure. There is considerable controversy on how artemisinins work and over emerging indications of resistance to this class of antimalarial drugs. Several individual molecules have been proposed as targets for artemisinins, in addition to the idea that artemisinins might have many targets at the same time. Our suggestion that artemisinins inhibit the parasite-encoded sarco-endoplasmic reticulum Ca(2+)-ATPase (SERCA) PfATP6 has gained support from recent observations that a polymorphism in the gene encoding PfATP6 is associated with in vitro resistance to artemether in field isolates of P. falciparum.

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