Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have developed a new drug regimen for the treatment of malaria in children

Kenya, a child sits on a bed surrounded by a mosquito net, which is used to prevent malaria from being bitten by mosquitoes

Malaria can infect people of all ages, but young children with this disease perform particularly poorly and are often excluded from clinical trials of drug treatments

Researchers from the School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, combined blood sampling suitable for children, clinical trials, and computer modeling to design an effective new method to prevent malaria in children: in the first few years of life, two drugs are taken every month.

These findings, published in the November 18th issue of Nature Communications, bring new hope to millions of children around the world who have been repeatedly attacked by malaria (sometimes fatal)

"Malaria in young children is a big problem," said Erika Wallender, MD, the lead author of the study and a faculty member in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy

Although there are antimalarial drugs, mosquito nets and insecticides to combat malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, malaria still causes 400,000 deaths each year

Wallender and her team focused their work on Uganda, which has one of the highest malaria transmission rates in the world

The team is composed of many collaborators from the University of California, San Francisco, including Dr.

Chemoprevention, the routine use of drugs for uninfected people, is one of the latest methods to fight malaria

Researchers benefited from a library of 4,000 blood samples collected during a 2014 clinical trial of malaria chemoprevention in children

"For these types of research, we rarely involve such a small child," Wallender said

The test was developed by clinical pharmacy instructor Francesca Aweeka, PharmD and her team.

In 2016, Wallender's team began to measure drug levels in these samples to better understand how different drug concentrations affect susceptibility to malaria

The researchers combined the data from the 2014 clinical trial samples with other data on the pharmacokinetics (or movement in the body) of these drugs, and used computer modeling to determine the maximum protection of the drug while minimizing toxicity And the dose of potential drug resistance

The model showed that two antimalarial drugs, dihydroartemisinin and piperaquine, actively administered to young children every four weeks can provide 95% antimalarial protection

Wallender said: "Modeling work can indeed strengthen the conclusions we have drawn from clinical trials

The researchers concluded that age-based drug dosages, rather than the weight-based regimens currently used, will provide malnourished children with the same benefits as other children
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Although the weight of malnourished children is lower, their organ size better reflects their ability to metabolize drugs and is likely to be similar to better nourished children of the same age
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This question is important because 25% of Ugandan children are underweight
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Wallender said: "We hope this work will affect the use and dosage of malaria chemoprevention, and we also hope to provide a model for the optimization of the dosage of antimalarial drugs for vulnerable groups
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" "But in addition to defining more effective treatment options for children, our The research really emphasizes the importance of malnutrition to the effects of these treatments
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