topnaman | Malaria blog

In early April of this year a Vietnamese news source carried an article about the challenges of malaria control and the possibility of future malaria epidemics. A substantial portion of the piece focused on antimalarial resistance, including high failure rates of chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine. What was surprising was a passing mention of artesunate failures: … [...]

Artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) have become the global standard for the treatment of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in areas with existing or emerging drug resistance. ACTs have several advantages: combination therapy diminishes the probability of de novo mutation, artemisinin is the most schizonticidal drug and reduces parasite biomass very rapidly resulting in faster clearance rates, and [...]

GlaxoSmithKline pulled Lapdap (chloroproguanil-dapsone) from the market and ended the development of Dacart (Lapdap+artesunate) after phase III trials of the drugs showed significant hemoglobin reductions in patients with glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency. Patient’s with G6PD deficiency have weaker red blood cell membranes which can rupture when exposed to oxidative stress caused by certain drugs [...]

Much of the world still diagnoses malaria clinically (based on symptoms alone without testing for the presence of the parasite). Recently, a Liverpool team working in Mozambique examined the cost to individual patients resulting from the clinical diagnosis of malaria (Malaria Journal – open access). The findings were striking but certainly not surprising. 23 percent [...]