Malaria drugs and drug action

Healthcare is vital to every human being. The quality of the healthcare is dependent on the qualification and experience of the health professional attending to the patient. In the recent past, there has been a rise in cases of death of patients due to wrong prescriptions. However, this is not the only cause of mortality of patients in the hands of the doctors. Increased consumption of drugs and substance abuse makes the body develop resistance towards that particular drug that it becomes in active in the body.

At other times, the drug may become too weak to deal with a healthcare problem. As a result, professionals have gone back to the field and conducted research to come up with the more efficient drug. Additionally, “people are still looking for cures to many diseases.” (Snowden & Bucala, 2014) This makes the field of healthcare on among those who come up with new products frequently. Healthcare is the maintenance of health through diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases or injury and other physical and mental impairments that are prevalent in human beings. Treatment and prevention are through drugs that are improved over time in the case of new discoveries in the field of medicine.
Malaria is one of the most common diseases worldwide. It is a parasitic disease caused by a Plasmodium species. The parasite is carried by a female Anopheles mosquito and is transmitted to the human being through bites or consumption of blood meals. The parasitic species have three life cycles; the initial one is the liver, the in the blood stream where it is active and causes malaria symptoms and finally reproduces in the blood. It is at the final stage that it can be transmitted to another person through a bite (Staines & Krishna, 2012). Several attempts have been made to eradicate malaria in the past, and the same efforts are still being made to date.  Its eradication and prevention have been made a primary goal in many states around the globe and whether it will come to pass remains the question for everyone. New research has led to the development of a new drug, a compound that is said to have the potential to simultaneously prevent and treat malaria infections. The drug, ELQ-300 whose development was Medicines of malaria venture, in conjunction with the university of South Florida, Drexel university, Monash University, the Swiss non-profit organization, the Portland veteran affairs medical center and the Oregon health and science university (Miley, Pou, Winter, Nilsen, Li, & Kelly, 2015) is the current hope for the eradication of malaria and is still undergoing research and development with multiple tests being performed on mice and their progress monitored to assess its effectiveness and suitability for human consumption.
Development of new drugs always receives mixed emotions from different people depending on the knowledge base of each. The effectiveness is always determined through test where mostly animals are used. The new anti-malarial drug is said to work by interrupting the lifecycle of Plasmodium. ELQ-300 disables the mitochondria of Plasmodium cells thereby attacking the parasite, this causes it to die and the patient is relieved of the symptoms. The drug is also said to prevent transmission because a person who has used the drug has in active Plasmodium in the blood stream (Dziedzic, 2010). However, the drug has very poor solubility in water and exhibit high crystalline limit absorption, because of this, only low blood concentrations can be achieved through oral dosing. The low blood levels are said to be sufficient for therapy but too small to establish acceptable safety margins. As a result the drug is yet to be approved safe for human in treatment of malaria.
ELQ-300 is said to have the ability to kill the parasites in all of its three stages of life cycle by extending its potency over an elongated period which on the other hand can result in side effects to human. Researchers claim that the drug is high enough to kill the Plasmodium of the parasite without affecting the users’ cells.” The drug is less likely to cause the development of drug resistance in malaria parasites.” (Staines & Krishna, 2012). Drug resistance is the primary reason why the treatment of malaria disease has become tough and stubborn. It occurs through the evolution of the pathogens and is supported by misuse of antimicrobials.fro instance; incomplete dosage makes the pathogen survive and acquire resistance to the drug used. For this particular drug, it uses in mice has not resulted in any resistance case so far. The reason for this is believed to be the dosage and the potency of the drug over an extended period of time which ensures that it attacks the parasite at its three stages before it can become in effective (Snowden & Bucala, 2014). It is also possible to take the drug in smaller dosage given its deep potency levels whose side effects are not yet disclosed.
No drug can be perfectly suitable to fight a disease even when the initial stages predict positive results. Some researchers believe that eventually the drug will find a way of developing resistance “No matter how good the medicine looks at this point, most likely the parasite will figure out how to become resistant to it others hold that by the fact that current anti-malarial drugs have become less effective due to drug resistance, a more urgent solution is needed to deal with malaria.
Cases of death from malaria have been in a progressive increase over the past years with more than 700,000 people succumbing to it every year.  Finding a solution for this, therefore, becomes the force behind the need to make new and more reliable anti-bacterial developments. ELQ-300 forms part of the many attempts to deal with the menace and professionals are doing a close observation on it while hoping for the best. Others still believe that the power of the parasite will in future overcome the drug though the development of resistance to many other drugs before it.  As a result, the treatment and prevention of malaria will continue to be the catastrophe of the entire globe starting with sub-Saharan Africa where the female anopheles mosquitoes develop favorably