Polymorphisms in genes associated with drug resistance of Plasmodium vivax in India

Malaria is a sterning public health concern in India and contribute to a major part of malaria burden in Southeast Asia. Being more populated and diverse geographic conditions makes more suitable place for sustaining malaria parasite in India. Anti-malarial resistance is a major concern in the battle against malaria, and the identified molecular markers will aid us to monitor the drug resistance in endemic areas. The aim of the current study is to determine the genotype of drug resistance associated genes pvmdr-1 and pvcrt-o from four different regions of India. Especially from Puducherry and Jodhpur, there were no prior studies focused on screening of drug resistance genes in P. vivax parasite. A total of 240 positive P. vivax infected patient samples were collected from four tertiary care hospitals from four different regions of India, namely, Puducherry (PDY), Mangaluru (MAQ), Cuttack (CTC), Jodhpur (JDH). All samples were screened by microscopy, RDT, QBC, and further DNA was extracted and vivax mono-infection was confirmed by nested PCR. Randomly selected amplicons were further subjected to nucleotide sequencing. The prevalence of K10 insertion in pvcrt-o gene was detected with 18.8% in PDY, 12.5% in MAQ and 6.3% in CTC P. vivax isolates, whereas no change in nucleotide was identified in P. vivax isolates collected from JDH region. Based on the F1076L mutation in pvmdr-1 gene, resistant P. vivax isolates was highly predominant in both the regions, JDH and CTC, with 100%, followed by MAQ with 93.3% and PDY with 73.3%. This study showed less frequency of pvcrt-o and high frequency of pvmdr-1 gene variants associated with CQ resistance, which act as an indicator and the onset of P. vivax drug resistance trend in four different regions of India. Due to the poor phenotypic studies available for P. vivax parasite, the present study data for CQ resistance based on pvcrt-o and pvmdr-1 markers should assist by providing base-line data for future monitoring of drug resistance.