Question: Is it possible that using many different medicines to treat Malaria could prove bad for us because they could eventually evolve to become "superbugs" and become resistant to all types of treatments?

Ailsa Powell answered on 20 Jun 2011:

I explained to you before how the parasite become resistant to the medicines didn’t I? Here’s that answer again if you want to check back http://ias.im/44.1209

Unfortuantely using any medicine or combination of medicines will eventually lead to resistance. When you use any medicine to treat any disease you will place selective pressure on the bug that’s causing the illness and it will do it’s best to survive – as I explained in the other answer. By using one medicine only you actually have a higher chance of getting the parasite to develop resistance to that medicine. If you use multiple medicines you should be able to kill the parasites that are resistant to the other medicine and vice versa. But you have to be careful as you don’t want resistance to develop to all the medicines ,so a lot of thought has to be given to what treatments should be recommeded and often you have one type of medicine held back to be used only when all other treatments have failed.

Bacterial superbugs that you get in hospitals have come about due to doctors perscribing antiobiotics when they aren’t really needed. The bacteria developed resistance to the antibiotics and now there are some bacterial infections that can only be treated by one antibiotic. These special antibiotics are held in reserve and are only used when someone is ill with a superbug to limit the chances of resistance developing to it.

Development of resistance is why so many scientists are looking for new antimalarial treatments (and also lots looking for new antibiotics). We don’t want one new treatment we want as many as we can find, that way we can stay one step ahead of the development of resistance and always have new drugs held back in reserve.

Hope that answers your question 🙂