Medical Xpress: An analysis of patients from across the malaria endemic world suggests that a key antimalarial treatment could be improved by better dosing in young children.Antimalarial drug resistance has hampered malaria control programs for almost 60 years. A key factor in combatting this threat is to ensure that all antimalarial drugs are deployed in a way that ensures that the maximum number of patients are completely cured.
A study published this week in PLOS Medicine explores this issue by presenting the results of a large pooled analysis of more than 7,000 patients with malaria from Africa, Asia and South America. It presents a convincing argument for public health policy-makers to pay careful attention to dosing recommendations for artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) when reviewing current drug treatment protocols, particularly for young children.
The paper examines the combination of piperaquine and dihydroartemisinin, an increasingly common choice of treatment for patients suffering from malaria caused by the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.
The results of the study, coordinated by the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN), show that while treatment of malaria with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine generally results in excellent patient recovery, young children are at higher risk of treatment failure and this may be due to their receiving an insufficient dose of the drug....
A 1943 anti-malaria poster, US Public Health Service
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