Methylene blue helps block malaria transmission, according to the research performed by an international team of scientists. Two different compounds, one of which is older malaria drug and another is a common type of laboratory dye having familiar properties antimalarial, can effectively and safely be involved in the regimens of therapy to prevent transmission of the most common type of malaria in Africa.
The new research is expected to be helping reduce the widespread of deadliest Plasmodium falciparum malaria, a unicellular protozoan parasite along with its drug resisting forms. The finding shows a speeding progress for eliminating the disease.
Teun Bousema, study author and microbiologist from the Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands stated that “Tests of the drug in West Africa have found that the safe drug long used to treat urinary tract infections (UTI), is also effective against malaria. But the medication turns the urine of a user vivid blue.”
All the findings of the study have been published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Tuesday, February 6, 2018. The research has tested an efficacy and safety of primaquine that has been used since decades for treating another type of malaria known as P. vivax.
Bousema added in a statement that, “The results are very promising. We found that adding either of these drugs to antimalarial medicines already in use ensured that patients were no longer able to pass the disease back on to mosquitoes. This is something we need to solve because it could stop people from using it.”
