Artemisinin is a drug used to treat multi-drug resistant strains of falciparum malaria. The compound (a sesquiterpene lactone) is isolated from the plant Artemisia annua. Not all plants of this species contain artemisinin.
On Wednesday, nine of the 10 countries in the WHO's Asia-Pacific region "that suffer most" from malaria pledged to phase out the use of artemisinin-only to treat malaria and use it in combination with other drugs by 2015, Reuters reports (Lyn, 9/23).
Six research project grant awards totaling $5.1 million will be made to Washington life sciences organizations and their partners, the state’s Life Sciences Discovery Fund announced today.
Several organization led by the WHO have contributed $5 billion for a campaign aimed at distributing 700 million bednets to prevent malaria in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015, the East African reports.
In October, Ghana's Ministry of Health plans to begin a national program to eliminate malaria with the goal of being the first country in Africa to eradicate the disease, George Sipa-Adjah Yankey, the minister of health, said recently at the 74th Annual Conference of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana in Accra, Ghana, GNA/Homepage Ghana reports. Yankey cited the looming threat of the malaria parasite's resistance to artemisinin therapy (8/3).
Artemisinin, the "basis of the most effective" malaria treatment recommended by the WHO, took nearly twice as long to clear malaria parasites in patients in western Cambodia than it did in patients in northwestern Thailand, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study, which shows the "drugs are losing their power against the disease in Cambodia," Bloomberg reports (Bennett, 7/30).
Almost half of all artemisinin manufacturers and malaria-endemic countries are "failing to comply" with WHO requirements to sell the treatment in combination with other drugs, which is increasing the risk that malaria parasites will develop resistance to artemsinin, Nature reports.
Current combination malaria therapies recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) provide adequate treatment for mild malaria, according to a Cochrane Systematic Review of the evidence. However, selected trials had high failure rates for some combinations and evidence for the effectiveness of anti-malarial therapies is lacking in some vulnerable groups.
PTI/Hindu reports on the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN) – an "international network of malaria scientists," which will be "established to map the emergence of resistance" to malaria drugs and "guide global efforts to control and eradicate the disease."
Scientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have shown that rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) for malaria infection can provide valuable support for healthcare in low and mid-income countries in the fight against the disease.
A new study, carried out in primary care units in Zanzibar and published in this week's issue of PLoS Medicine, evaluates the impact of rapid malaria tests on prescribing practice and clinical outcomes.
Malaria deaths reported from health facilities in Zambia have declined by 66%. This result along with other supporting data indicates that Zambia has reached the 2010 Roll Back Malaria target of a more than 50% reduction in malaria mortality compared to 2000.
Scientists and health officials are increasing efforts to curb a drug-resistant malaria strain along the Thai-Cambodian border that is becoming increasingly resistant to artemisinin, an ingredient in artemisinin-based combination therapies, IRIN News reports.
A doctoral thesis presented at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that it is possible to describe and quantify the relationships between dose, concentration and effectiveness of several drugs against HIV/AIDS and malaria.
In addition to providing a simple and much less expensive means of making artemisinin, the most powerful anti-malaria drug in use today, synthetic biology can also help to extend the effectiveness of this drug.
Tanzania's government plans to introduce artemisinin-based combination malaria treatments to prevent the development of drug resistance, the Guardian/IPP Media reports.
WHO today said that the emergence of parasites resistant to artemisinin at the Thai-Cambodia border could seriously undermine the success of the global malaria control efforts.
The results of two new large scale trials show that the combination of dihydroartemisinin and piperaquine (DHA+PQP) not only is effective against uncomplicated malaria in a way which is comparable to other artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), but it also protects patients against new infections for at least two months after treatment.
This year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve the first malaria drug to contain artemisinin, a wormwood derivative from China that has proven effective for malaria in Africa and Asia.
Interleukin-12 is a naturally occurring protein essential for the proper functioning of the human immune system.
An anti-cancer compound found in broccoli and cabbage works by lowering the activity of an enzyme associated with rapidly advancing breast cancer, according to a University of California, Berkeley, study appearing this week in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.