Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK.
Trends Parasitol. 2011 Feb;27(2):67-72. doi: 10.1016/j.pt.2010.09.005.
Antimalarial drug therapies containing artemisinins, 'ACTs', have become the mainstay for treating uncomplicated malaria in endemic countries. This is a major public health achievement requiring substantial political, financial and scientific input. The most compelling scientific argument for ACT deployment employed a very simple basic rationale that emphasised their role in slowing the origin of drug resistance while largely neglecting the additional role(s) of ACTs in slowing or preventing the spread of resistance once it has arisen. Recent reports suggest that early stages of resistance to artemisinins and/or its partner drugs could be occurring, thus it is timely to briefly review exactly how ACTs slow the origin and spread of resistance and to interpret the threat of resistance within this context.
含青蒿素的抗疟药物疗法，即“ACT”，已成为治疗流行地区的无并发症疟疾的主要手段。这是一项重大的公共卫生成就，需要大量的政治、财政和科学投入。支持 ACT 应用部署的最有力的科学依据采用了一个非常简单的基本原理，即强调它们在减缓耐药性产生方面的作用，而在很大程度上忽略了 ACT 在耐药性产生后减缓或阻止其传播的额外作用。最近的报告表明，青蒿素及其联合用药的耐药性可能已经处于早期阶段，因此及时简要回顾 ACT 减缓耐药性产生和传播的机制，并在这一背景下解读耐药性的威胁是很有必要的。
