Chloroquine Resistant Malaria

   One of the major factors that has had a great effect on the successful treatment of malaria is the resistance that the malaria parasite has developed to some of the antimalarial medications that are widely used. One of the drugs that was commonly used for the treatment of malaria is chloroquine. The success of chloroquine in treating malaria led to it's wide use worldwide which in turn has led to the development of chloroquine resistant plasmodium strains. This resistance has created major public health issues across the globe.
   Chloroquine became the drug of choice for malaria treatment towards the end of world war II. Initially, due to the great success of the use of chloroquine in malaria treatment and the success of DDT in controlling mosquitoes, campaigns for worldwide eradication of malaria were launched in some areas. Worldwide eradication was later found to be far fetched, hence these efforts were discontinued.
   A specific gene has been found to be related to chloroquine resistance. This gene has been named the pfcrt    gene. Eight distinct points of mutations have been identified on this gene as the significant differences between the chloroquine resistant and chloroquine sensitive strains of the parasite. Due to the development of these chloroquine resistant strains, the use of chloroquine has greatly reduced and other antimalarial drugs are being used instead of chloroquine.

References
1. Amercan Society of Health System , P. (2010, September 01).Chloroquine phosphate. Retrieved from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a682318.html

2.  Wellems, T. E., & Plowe, C. W. (2001). Chloroquine resistant malaria. Journal of Infectious Disease,184(6), 770-776. Retrieved from http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/184/6/770.full