View clinical trials related to Malaria.
Filter by:Malaria remains one of the most devastating infectious diseases in the world. Despite the potential for serious adverse outcomes with each episode of malaria, most cases in endemic areas are diagnosed on clinical grounds alone. Even the simple technique of light microscopy, the gold standard for malaria diagnosis, is inaccessible to most individuals in resource-poor malarious areas. New diagnostic methods that are practical for limited health-care settings are urgently needed. Immunochromatographic rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for malaria are easy to use, require little infrastructure or expertise, show good accuracy, and are increasingly advocated for routine use in malaria-endemic areas. A major challenge now is to implement RDTs effectively in typical African clinical settings. We plan to evaluate the clinical effectiveness and safety of a training curriculum incorporating RDT use in peripheral government health centers in Uganda. Results from this study will provide evidence for scale-up of RDT implementation in Uganda, as planned by the Uganda Ministry of Health from mid-2008, as well as in other sub-Saharan African countries. The aim of this study is to evaluate the clinical effectiveness and safety of a basic training program incorporating RDTs, as compared with standard-of-care presumptive treatment, for the management of patients who present with suspected malaria at peripheral health centers in Uganda. Our hypothesis is that training in fever case management and RDT use will allow health center staff to reduce unnecessary antimalarial prescriptions without compromising patient outcomes, compared with the current practice of presumptive antimalarial therapy for all febrile patients.
In areas of seasonal malaria transmission the burden of severe disease and mortality due to malaria is mainly among children under 5 years of age. Intermittent preventive treatment (IPT) with antimalarial drugs given to all children once a month during the transmission season is a promising new strategy for malaria prevention. Studies in Senegal, Ghana, Mali and The Gambia have shown this approach can be highly effective. In Senegal, seasonal IPT with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) and one dose of artesunate resulted in a 90% reduction in incidence of clinical malaria in a recent trial in Senegal (Cisse et al., Lancet 2006). The purpose of the present project is to determine the public health impact and cost effectiveness of this intervention when it is delivered through the routine health service to communities in rural areas in Senegal. Demographic surveillance will be set up in the rural population of three districts (Mbour, Bambey and Fatick) which comprises approximately 540,000 people, including 100,000 children under 5 yrs, and is served by 54 health posts, as an expansion of the area covered by the existing DSS of Niakhar. Information about births, deaths and migrations, household characteristics such as socioeconomic status, and vaccination status of children and their use of bednets, will be recorded in 6-monthly rounds of all households. In selected areas, deaths among children under 10 years will be investigated using verbal autopsies. Over four years from September 2008 - November 2011, seasonal IPT (three monthly administrations of SP (sulfalene-pyrimethamine) plus amodiaquine during the transmission season each year to children 3-59 months of age) will be introduced gradually, in a step-wedge design, by 9 health posts in 2008, by an additional 18 posts in 2009, and another 18 in 2010 and 9 in 2011. At the end of each transmission season, a cross-sectional survey of 2400 children under 5 yrs of age, in which finger prick blood samples will be taken, will be used to estimate the prevalence of molecular markers of drug resistance to Plasmodium falciparum, the prevalence of anaemia and the nutritional status of children. Malaria incidence will be monitored by passive surveillance through health posts, health centres, and hospitals. Cost effectiveness will be assessed. Due to changes in the epidemiology of malaria in the study area, the upper age limit for inclusion was increased from 5 to 10 years old from September 2009.
Malaria is a major contributor of disease burden in Sub-Saharan Africa, and pregnant women and children are the most vulnerable population. Malaria in pregnancy increases the risks of abortion, prematurity, maternal anaemia, low birth weight (LBW), perinatal, neonatal and infant mortality. For prevention and control of malaria in pregnancy, Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPT), insecticide treated nets (ITNs) and case management for malaria and anemia are recommended. HIV infection in pregnancy increases the risk of malaria, LBW, post-natal mortality and also of anaemia. In pregnant women, HIV infection decreases the efficacy of IPT with the medicine sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), which is the only treatment with proven efficacy and safety in IPT and is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Unfortunately, there is a documented increase of resistance to SP, so cotrimoxazole (CTX) could be an alternative: many studies in Zambia and Uganda demonstrated that it reduces mortality and morbidity in HIV infected persons, and CTX prophylaxis significantly improves birth outcomes in immuno-suppressed HIV women. Unfortunately, there is not yet information on its effectiveness for preventing placental malaria infection, maternal anaemia and LBW. Thus in this study, we aim to establish the safety and efficacy of daily CTX in preventing malaria infection during pregnancy and its consequences, both in HIV infected and non-infected pregnant women. This information is urgently needed to assist to issue guidelines on IPT in pregnancy.
This study will assess the safety and efficacy of artemether-lumefantrine tablets (6-dose regimen) in African infants / children with acute uncomplicated falciparum malaria.
The purpose of this study is to determine the importance of key blood group molecules in the clinical outcome of Plasmodium falciparum malaria infection in children.
The study aims to show that the candidate malaria vaccine GMZ2 is as safe as the already publicly used vaccine against rabies. 30 Gabonese children aged 1-5 years will be enrolled and randomly allocated to receive either malaria vaccine or rabies vaccine without the investigator or the participants knowing what they received. They will receive 3 doses each at one month intervals, and will be followed up for one year to evaluate safety parameters. 30 and 100µg doses for the candidate malaria vaccine GMZ 2 will be evaluated for safety. This is the second time that candidate malaria vaccine GMZ 2 is being tested in Africa, the first time being in Gabonese adults where the product was found to be safe.
Malaria in pregnancy is a major public health problem in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past decades, P. falciparum has shown increasing resistance to chloroquine and Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine, which has prompted a change in treatment approach; artemisinin containing combination therapies (ACTs) are now the standard treatment of P. falciparum malaria in areas with established resistance to traditional therapies. However, a standard approach for using ACT in pregnancy does not exist in Africa, where some countries keep on using quinine, while others allow the use of ACTs. Thus, there is need of establishing the safety and efficacy of ACTs in malaria-infected pregnant women. Since the pharmacokinetic of antimalarials may be altered during pregnancy and since available pharmacokinetic data are still somewhat limited, we propose to carry out a study confirming or disproving existing pharmacokinetic data (collected in South-East Asia), before starting any larger African efficacy and safety trials. The fixed-dose combination mefloquine-artesunate (MQ-AS), developed by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, will be used in the study, which will compare the pharmacokinetics of MQ-AS for treatment of P.falciparum in 24 pregnant women in the second and third trimesters, to the pharmacokinetics of this regimen in 24 matched non-pregnant P.falciparum infected women. The study will be carried out in Burkina Faso.
Primary objective is to demonstrate the non-inferiority of PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) adjusted adequate clinical and parasitological response at Day 28 of Coarsucam versus Coartem, based on the first malaria attack of each patient. Secondary objectives: For the first attack: To compare the 2 groups of treatment in terms of: - Day 42 efficacy - Parasitological and fever clearance - Clinical and Biological tolerability - Evolution of gametocyte carriage For attack 2nd and following: To compare the 2 groups of treatment in terms of: - Day 28 and Day 42 clinical and parasitological effectiveness - Clinical and Biological tolerability - Proportion of patients without fever at Day 3 - Proportion of patients without parasites at Day 3 - Evolution of gametocyte carriage - Compliance During the total follow up of the cohort: To compare the 2 groups of treatment in terms of: - Treatment incidence density - Impact of repeated treatment on clinical and biological tolerability - Impact on anaemia - Impact on Hackett score.
The purpose of the study is to determine in healthy volunteers whether certain anti-HIV medications (lopinavir/ritonavir and efavirenz) affect the drug levels of certain anti-malarial medications (artesunate/ amodiaquine and artemether/ lumefantrine) and vice versa. Since these drugs are degraded using overlapping pathways in the liver, it is predicted that changes in both drug level and overall drug exposure will be observed.
Malaria remains one of the most common life-threatening illnesses in the tropics with a dramatic toll of more than one million deaths each year. A majority of malaria cases are non-complicated and only few evolve towards severe malaria resulting from the combination of parasite-specific virulence factors and host inflammatory responses. Cerebral malaria (CM) kills more than 1 million African children each year. CM carries a fatality rate of about 20% in adults, higher in children, despite timely and adequate chemotherapy. Moreover, the more rapid clearance of parasitaemia with new antimalarial drugs is not associated with improved survival, suggesting the potential interest for adjunctive therapies in the early phase of the disease. Cerebral malaria leading to seizure and coma is associated with severe intracranial hypertension caused by brain-swelling. Recent imaging and post-mortem findings in adult cerebral malaria have confirmed the presence of diffuse cerebral oedema with thalamic and cerebellar white matter hypoattenuation, diffuse petechial hemorrhages and symmetric ischemic changes involving the thalamus and the cerebellum. However, the nature of the pathogenetic processes leading to cerebral malaria is incompletely understood but mechanisms linking cytokines with endothelial cells activation in the cerebral microvasculature have been recently stressed. The effect of new neuroprotective therapies has not yet been investigated, although the manifestations of cerebral malaria partly share features with neurological stroke or acute non-specific neurological disorders. The hormone erythropoietin (EPO) is probably one of the more enthusiastic drugs in this area. EPO is as a member of type I cytokine superfamily with multiple functions, including a prominent role for erythropoiesis and neuroprotection. Systematically administered EPO crosses the blood brain barrier via the abundant expression of EPO receptors at brain capillaries, and acts as an anti-apoptotic and cytoprotective cytokine. Moreover, EPO prevents inflammation by inhibiting pro-inflammatory cytokines including TNFα, preserves endothelial cells integrity and prevents blood-brain barrier permeability. We propose a randomized clinical trial to investigate the safety and efficacy of EPO in patients presenting cerebral malaria and hospitalized at Gabriel Toure hospital, Bamako, Mali, to reduce the incidence of premature death in hospitalized patients.