Tu Youyou’s Team Resolves Artemisinin Resistance In Malaria Treatment

Malaria, the world’s No. 1 insect-borne infectious disease, is always asked in the immunization form before international students arriving in America. This is an important step in the U.S. international student insurance (aka 美国留学生 保险) enrollment procedure, and it is more significant than purchasing F-1 international student medical insurance (aka 留学生 医疗保险) and/or J-1 insurance (aka j1 保险) if you are a visiting scholar. The careful medical background inquiry demonstrates the school’s responsibility and equal care to every person.

After graduation, many international students are fortunately given work offers from institutions in the United States. During their OPT period the health insurance (aka opt期间保险) is up to each individual. They are given a list of health insurance recommendations (aka 医疗保险推荐), but whether to purchase or not depends on the person’s preference. Since Malaria does not become extinct up till now, scientists have been putting endeavor in fighting Malaria for decades. Nobel Laureate Tu Youyou announced Monday that her team has proposed solutions to the problem of artemisinin resistance, providing new evidence that artemisinin is still “the best weapon” against malaria.

As the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for the discovery of artemisinin, Tu said that the drug resistance has remained a big challenge to fighting malaria. Tu’s team has been devoted to the study of the resistant mechanism since 2015 and discovered that partial artemisinin resistance is actually a delay in the clearance of malaria parasites from the bloodstream following treatment with combination therapy.

The 89-year-old scientist explained that plasmodia can enter a state of dormancy during the three-day Artemisinin Combination Treatment (ACT), while they also develop a resistance to partner drugs. But if the treatment period is extended to five to seven days and the partner drugs are replaced, the artemisinin resistance can be solved and plasmodia can be killed.

A paper on the study was published in the April issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Pedro L. Alonso, director of the Global Malaria Programme of the World Health Organization (WHO), said the article published by Tu and her colleagues on NEJM, a top peer-reviewed journal, has demonstrated the excellence of her research ability. Billions of malaria cases have been treated through artemisinin-based combination therapies.

Traveling to an indigent country or approaching malaria-concentrated crowd increases the probability of infection. Parents of international students who come to the United States ought to consider purchasing American visitor insurance (aka 美国 探亲保险).