There are about 42 clinical studies being (or have been) conducted in Niger. The country of the clinical trial is determined by the location of where the clinical research is being studied. Most studies are often held in multiple locations & countries.
The trial is an interventional, cluster-randomized trial to assess the impact of oral ciprofloxacin for household and community contacts of meningitis cases on the incidence of meningitis during an epidemic. The trial contains a nested sub-study ("resistance study") to assess the effect of a single dose of ciprofloxacin on the prevalence of fluoroquinolone-resistant enterobacteriaceae in the study area.
Major epidemics of meningococcal meningitis occur in countries of the African Sahel and sub-Sahel every few years. Most of these epidemics are caused by meningococci belonging to serogroup A. Until recently there has been no serogroup A conjugate vaccine available to prevent epidemics in Africa because none of the major pharmaceutical companies wanted to develop such a vaccine for commercial reasons. For this reason a public private partnership was established in 2001, the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP), with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop an affordable new serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine for Africa. The new vaccine, MenAfriVac™, received WHO pre-qualification in 2010 and mass campaigns started in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in 2010. It is expected that full coverage through mass vaccination campaigns will be achieved by the end of 2011 in these three countries. A case-control study will be conducted in Mali and Niger during the epidemic seasons of 2012 and 2013 to assess the efficacy of MenAfriVac™.
The purpose of the study is to determine whether the artesunate-amodiaquine combination is effective in treating uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria in children with severe acute malnutrition. Infection with Plasmodium falciparum malaria remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in malnourished children. Malnutrition is known to have a modulating effect on the incidence of malaria infections, its severity and effectiveness of treatments. However, little data exists on antimalarial drug efficacy in malnourished children. Artesunate-amodiaquine combination is the first line treatment used in Médecins Sans Frontières programmes in Niger. The assumption of current efficacy of artesunate-amodiaquine is based on non malnourished children. The aim of this study is to measure the clinical and parasitological efficacy in severely malnourished children. The study is consistent with the standard WHO protocol for monitoring antimalarial drug efficacy (WHO: Methods for surveillance of antimalarial drug efficacy. Geneva; 2009), except for one inclusion criterion. Severe acute malnutrition is an inclusion criteria, instead of being an exclusion criteria. The study will encompass a pharmacokinetic part that will provide important information on the absorption of the drug.