A simplified regimen for severe malaria
In a current clinical trial, a team of scientists including researchers from the DZIF has shown that treating severe malaria in children can be simplified. The results have been published in PLOS Medicine.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that severe malaria be treated with intravenous or intramuscular injections of artesunate (five-dose regimen), as patients with severe malaria cannot take pills reliably or safely. A simpler regimen would be easier to administer in such resource-limited settings, where giving the correct doses on time to small, sick children can be challenging.
In this trial, the researchers investigated the efficacy of a three-dose artesunate regimen (intramuscular) for the treatment of severe malaria in African children, and compared it to the efficacy of a five-dose regimen (intramuscular) and a three-dose regimen (intravenous). Intramuscular injections are much easier to administer than intravenous ones.
Using parasite-clearance to measure the treatment efficacy, the researchers showed that a simplified three-dose regimen (intramuscular) for severe malaria in African children is non-inferior to the more complex WHO-recommended regimen. Administering this simplified regimen could contribute to more successful treatment of children with severe malaria.
The study was coordinated by Prof Peter Kremsner, Director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine at the University of Tübingen, and included children with severe malaria from seven sites in five African countries. Prof Peter Kremsner is coordinator of the DZIF research field “Malaria”.
