There are about 292 clinical studies being (or have been) conducted in Zambia. 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.
Malaria is the most important human parasitic disease and is responsible of high morbidity and mortality in resource-poor countries. Pregnant women, who are a high-risk group, are almost always excluded from clinical trials; thus, the investigators lack sufficient information on the safety and efficacy of most antimalarials in pregnancy. The recommendation of the World Health Organization to use artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) in the 2nd and 3rd trimester is already implemented in several African countries, however documentation of their efficacy and safety in pregnancy is still limited. Thus, the investigators propose to evaluate the efficacy and safety of 4 ACT(artemether-lumefantrine, amodiaquine-artesunate, mefloquine-artesunate and dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine), when used to treat pregnant women with P. falciparum malaria; the results will help to recommend the optimal therapy for this high-risk group in Africa.
Citrulline is an amino acid produced in the intestine and in the liver, but the liver does not contribute significantly to circulating citrulline concentrations. The intestine is thus the only organ that normally releases significant amounts of citrulline into the blood stream. The investigators have designed a study looking at the value of measuring plasma citrulline concentration in patients with tropical enteropathy of mixed HIV status. The focus will be on the ability of the intestine to sustain the individual concerned from a nutritional standpoint. The investigators hypothesise that plasma citrulline concentration is a marker of small bowel absorptive integrity and an appropriate surrogate for HIV related enteropathy.
To examine the time to healing of genital lesion and duration of herpes simplex virus (HSV) shedding from genetic ulcer disease (GUD) among 90 HIV-negative African women who have a history of GUD and are HSV-2 seropositive and HIV-1 seronegative randomized in a 2:1 ratio to receive episodic acyclovir 400mg orally three times daily or matching placebo three times daily for 5 days and who are followed for a total of 13 days.
In this study, 66 HIV-infected women who desire contraception will be randomly assigned to use either an IUD or Depo Provera, and will be followed for six months. The study is intended to help investigators understand potential mechanisms by which hormonal contraception may hasten HIV disease progression.
In this study, the investigators will assess the population effectiveness of using routine HAART as a PMTCT strategy, through a community-based survey. The survey will be done in the catchment areas of four health clinics in rural Zambia both before and after giving routine ART in the clinics, so as to estimate population HIV-free survival among infants born in each target community. The investigators hypothesize that incorporation of routine ART into PMTCT will increase the HIV-free survival of exposed infants to 75%.
The investigators will enroll a cohort of HIV-infected pregnant women accessing PMTCT services, to better understand the incremental benefits (e.g. reduction in HIV transmission, improvements in HIV-free survival) and risks (e.g. drug toxicities) of the routine HAART strategy, in comparison to HIV-infected pregnant women accessing the Zambian Standard of Care services. The investigators will test the hypothesis that routine use of HAART produces significant reductions in HIV transmission rates, with only minimal side effects.
More than 1.5 million deaths of African children under 5 years of age have been due to Plasmodium falciparum malaria. When HIV and malaria are present as coinfections, they enhance each other's progression. The primary purpose of this study is to compare the malarial infection levels in HIV-infected infants and children receiving protease inhibitor (PI)- or non-nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI)-based highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).
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.
The ANRS 12174 study is a clinical trial that will compare the efficacy and safety of prolonged infant peri-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) with Lopinavir/Ritonavir (LPV/r) versus Lamivudine to prevent HIV-1 transmission through breast milk in children born to HIV-1-infected mothers not eligible for HAART and having benefited from perinatal antiretroviral (ART) regimens. The study will recruit 1500 mother-infant pairs in 4 African countries. Study design: PROMISE PEP is a multinational, randomised double-blind controlled clinical trial. Intervention: Infants will be randomised to receive LPV/r or 3TC twice daily from day seven (± 2 days) after birth until 4 weeks after cessation of breastfeeding (BF). We will recommend exclusive BF (EBF) up till including the 26th week of life followed by a relatively rapid (maximum of 8 weeks) cessation period. The maximum duration of PEP will thereby be 38 weeks. Primary objective: To compare the efficacy of infant LPV/r (40/10mg twice daily if 2-4kg and 80/20mg twice daily if >4kg) vs. Lamivudine 7,5mg twice daily if 2-4kg, 25mg twice daily if 4-8kg and 50mg twice daily if >8kg) from day 7 until 4 weeks after cessation of BF (maximum duration of prophylaxis: 50 weeks for a maximum duration of breastfeeding of 46 weeks) to prevent postnatal HIV-1 acquisition between 7 days and 50 weeks of age. Secondary objectives: - To assess the safety of long-term infant prophylaxis with LPV/r versus Lamivudine (including resistance, adverse events and growth) until 50 weeks. - HIV-1-free survival until 50 weeks - To build clinical trials capacity at the four study sites. Main endpoint: Acquisition of HIV-1 (as assessed by HIV-1 DNA PCR) between day 7 and 50 weeks of age Study population: HIV-uninfected infants at day 7 (± 2 days) born to HIV-1 infected mothers not eligible for HAART who choose to breastfeed their infants and who have benefited from the national prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) program during pregnancy and delivery. The study will recruit 1500 mother-infant pairs in Burkina Faso, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia. Study duration: Infants will be followed up for 50 weeks and the total study duration is five years. Expected outcome: This study will inform on the relative advantages (efficacy) and drawbacks of two interventions to support HIV-1-infected women not eligible for HAART to safely breastfeed their babies. If found to be safe and efficacious, the regimens would avoid the existing contradiction between optimal infant feeding and the prevention of MTCT through breast milk. Clinical trial capacity development will improve the future quality of trials conducted in these countries.
The NICHD Global Network (GN) for Women's and Children's Health Research, a multi-site, international research network, provides a unique infrastructure to implement an expanded perinatal verbal autopsy study using the FIRST BREATH trial as its platform. The FIRST BREATH trial is an ongoing study of neonatal resuscitation training in rural community settings within Global Network sites in Central Africa, Asia and Latin America. This study uses a validated VA questionnaire to determine COD of stillbirths and early neonatal deaths among participants in the FIRST BREATH study. We propose to expand the usefulness of perinatal verbal autopsy methodology in two ways. First by assessing whether the Community Coordinator (a non-physician health worker) can assign COD with a high level of concordance comparable to a Physician Panel, and second, whether the FIRST BREATH Birth Attendant can provide as reliable perinatal information as the mother during the VA interview. Our primary hypothesis is that the COD assigned by the FIRST BREATH Community Coordinator will be the same as the COD assigned by the Physician Panel in greater than 70% of early neonatal deaths (ENDs), when both use the same VA and FIRST BREATH data.