Harvard researchers have created a genetic map that could serve as an “early warning system” for detecting drug resistance in a malaria-causing parasite.

The results of the study, released Sunday in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Genetics, may help in the fight against Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly of the four parasites responsible for human malaria.

The lead researcher, Dyann F. Wirth, who is also chair of the School of Public Health’s Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, said that the finding could help producers of malaria vaccines respond to adaptations by the parasite in much the same way as the influenza vaccine is updated to combat changes in that virus.

“We’ll be able to monitor to see if vaccines are working and also to develop new vaccines,” Wirth said in a phone interview from Senegal, where she is running a workshop on her study’s results.

Wirth’s study—conducted in conjunction with researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as well as the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal—discovered almost 47,000 differences among the genes of the parasite in Africa, Asia, and South America.

This genetic variation gives Plasmodium falciparum the ability to overcome vaccines and other treatments for malaria, allowing the disease to continue spreading.

“It’s very rapidly evolving,” said Pardis C. Sabeti, a Broad Institute researcher who contributed to the study and whose previous work has focused on natural selection in humans.

Sabeti, like Wirth, was reached in Senegal—a country that ranks 11th worldwide in malaria prevalence, according to information from the United Nations University. In 2000, malaria affected 11.9 percent of the Senegalese population, according to the UN Development Programme.

Malaria is a leading cause of death in the developing world, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Between 350 and 500 million cases of malaria emerge each year, and another African child under the age of five dies from the disease every 40 seconds, according to CDC data.

But the results of the research provide some optimism in the global fight against the disease, Sabeti said. “It’s an exciting first step,” she said.