Active clinical trials for "Malaria"

A randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess the effectiveness of text reminders sent to ACT users through an automated text messaging system short-message-system. Study hypothesis: text message reminders increase adherence

This is a clinical trial in which healthy volunteers will be administered experimental malaria vaccines. One group of volunteers will receive vaccination with the leading malaria vaccine candidate, RTS,S/AS01. This vaccine schedule will consist of 3 doses of RTS,S/AS01 with an interval of 4 weeks between doses (Doses given at 0,4 and 8 week timepoints). Another group will receive a vaccination schedule composed of the same dosage and timing regimen of RTS,S, but they will also receive vaccination with ChAd63 ME-TRAP, 2 weeks after the first RTS,S followed 8 weeks later by vaccination with MVA ME-TRAP (2 and 10 week timepoints). The study will assess the safety of the vaccinations, and the immune responses to vaccination. Immune responses are measured by tests on blood samples. Volunteers will be infected with malaria by mosquito bites, 12 weeks after the first vaccination. In addition, a group of volunteers not receiving vaccines will also be infected with malaria by the same method. These infection experiments will be used to assess vaccine efficacy: how well the vaccines act to prevent malaria disease. A further single volunteer may also be infected with malaria; this volunteer participated in a previous trial where they received vaccines and was completely protected against malaria disease after infection by mosquito bite. The RTS,S/AS01 vaccine is a protein (RTS,S) mixed with an adjuvant (AS01). The ChAd63 ME-TRAP and MVA ME-TRAP vaccines are called viral vectored vaccines. They are made from viruses which are modified so that they can not multiply. The viruses have extra DNA in them so that after injection, the body makes malaria proteins (but malaria does not develop), so that the immune system builds a response to malaria without having been infected by it. Healthy volunteers will be recruited in England at three research sites: in Oxford, London and Southampton.

The purpose of this study is to assess whether twice-daily text message reminders over a six-month period to health workers in Malawi about diagnosis and treatment of malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea improve case management of these diseases.

The Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, a live attenuated Mycobacterium bovis vaccine, has been used to prevent tuberculosis for almost a century, and it is still the most used vaccine in the world. There is also circumstantial and indirect evidence that BCG vaccination can protect against malaria. Investigators hypothesize that BCG vaccination can offer protection against malaria in the Controlled Human Malaria Infection (CHMI) model. A total of 20 healthy male and female volunteers will participate in this randomized, single-blind clinical trial. Volunteers will be randomized to receive either BCG vaccination (BCG vaccine SSI) (group 1, n=10) or no treatment (group 2, n=10). Five weeks after vaccination of group 1 volunteers, all volunteers will undergo a CHMI administered by the bites of five P. falciparum infected Anopheles mosquitoes.

The Odisha State Malaria Control Program (India) has introduced 'malaria camps' where teams of health workers visit villages to educate the population, enhance vector control with long-lasting insecticide nets (LLINs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS), and perform village-wide screening with rapid diagnostic tests and treatment for malaria. The long-term goal of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of malaria camps (MCs) by determining if they reduce malaria, and to characterize malaria transmission in MCs.

The purpose of this study is to test the feasibility of the scale-up of sulphadoxine- pyrimethamine (SP) for the preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy in three Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Sokoto State, Nigeria. The scale-up strategy tested included the introduction of community-based distribution of SP in addition to ongoing health facility distribution during antenatal care (ANC) visits. In addition, the study examined for the effect of SP use by participants during pregnancy on the head circumference of live newborns and on the odds of a baby being a stillborn. Finally, the investigators also sought to quantify the costs associated with program scale up SP to deliver at least three doses of SP per participant via a government operated distribution program.

This is a single-center, open label study. The primary aim of this project is to develop a controlled human malaria infection transmission model ("CHMI-trans") or "challenge model" to evaluate the capacity of vaccines, biologics (monoclonal antibodies, or mAbs), and drugs to block malaria parasite transmission by assessing infectiousness of Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) gametocyte carriers for Anopheles mosquitoes.

Globally, malaria prevalence in 2016 was reported to have increased with 445,000 deaths, 91% of which occurred in sub-Sahara Africa with more than 75% being children. Individuals who carry the malaria parasite can either be symptomatic (showing signs and symptoms) or asymptomatic (without signs and symptoms). Asymptomatic malaria parasitaemia pose a very serious threat to malaria control efforts as they serve as reservoirs that fuel the transmission process. Therefore, interventions that target community-wide clearance of asymptomatic parasitaemia can drastically reduce malaria prevalence in the population and lead to elimination especially in endemic areas. Mass parasite clearance can deplete the parasite reservoirs and lower the transmission potential. Efforts are ongoing to scale-up interventions that work such as use of Long Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLIN), Intermittent Preventive Treatment in children (IPTc), and test, treat and track (TTT). However, there is need for mass testing, treatment and tracking (MTTT) of the whole population to reduce the parasite load before implementing the aforementioned interventions. Though, Seasonal Malaria Chemoprophylaxis (SMC) is adopted for selected localities in Ghana, the impact of such interventions could be enhanced, if combined with MTTT at baseline to reduce the parasite load. IPT of children in Ghana has demonstrated a parasite load reduction from 25% to 1%. However, unanswered questions include - could this be scaled up? What can be the coverage? What is needed for MTTT scale -up? In a pilot in Ghana, a coverage of more than 75% was achieved in target communities and reduced asymptomatic parasitaemia by 24% from July 2017 to July 2018. It is important to generate time series data to better analyse and understand the prevalence trends as well as the bottlenecks. In designing interventions that aim at reducing the burden of malaria in children under five, for example, MTTT has largely been left out. This study explores the scale-up of interventions that work using community volunteers, hypothesising that implementing MTTT complemented by community-based management can reduce the prevalence of asymptomatic malaria parasite carriage in endemic communities. The effect of the interventions will be observed by comparing baseline data to evaluation data. This study will document the challenges and bottlenecks associated with scaling-up of MTTT to inform future efforts to scale-up the intervention.

SB-252263 (Tafenoquine, TQ) is an 8-aminoquinoline (8-AQ) antimalarial drug being developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV). TQ is currently being developed for the radical cure of acute P. vivax malaria in combination with standard doses of CQ, which is 1500 mg over 3 days. The current gold standard for radical cure of P. vivax malaria in many areas of the world is chloroquine (CQ) for clearance of the acute parasitemia immediately followed by primaquine (PQ) to clear the liver stages of the parasite and prevent disease relapse. The 8-AQ class of drugs, including PQ, is hemolytic in subjects with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency. The current study will identify a dose of TQ within the target efficacious dose range that has a hemolytic effect similar to or less than PQ 15 mg OD x 14 days (i.e. ≤ 25-30% hemoglobin decline in WHO class III G6PD-deficient subjects).

The primary study hypothesis of the investigators is that administration of an iron supplement between meals at a dose like that used in the Pemba trial (~1 mg Fe/kg) during P. falciparum parasitemia will increase plasma non-transferrin-bound iron. A key subsidiary hypothesis is that iron administered with meals in amounts used in food fortification (~0.1 mg Fe/kg) will not produce plasma non-transferrin-bound iron. This research will be carried out at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand. The studies are intended to help understand how giving iron and folic acid to preschool children in Pemba, Zanzibar, Tanzania, (the "Pemba trial") in the doses recommended by the World Health Organization, could have resulted in an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. The investigators will examine the most likely explanation, that the dose of iron supplements used in the Pemba trial produced iron in the blood not bound to the usual carrier for iron (a protein called "transferrin"), that is called "non-transferrin-bound iron", abbreviated as NTBI. In children with malaria, this NTBI might favor the growth of malarial parasites or other causes of infection. At present, no studies have been carried out to see if NTBI is present after giving iron to patients with malaria. Using non-radioactive forms of iron (called "stable isotopes"), the investigators will study iron absorption and NTBI after giving a single dose of iron (like that used in the Pemba trial) one day after treatment for malaria has been started, while patients still have malaria parasites in the blood, and then again two weeks later, after the malaria has been cured. The investigators will study adults admitted to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Bangkok, Thailand, with malaria. For reasons of safety, the investigators have chosen to study adults in the hospital rather than children living in an area like Pemba but the results should also apply to children. The outcome of this research will help us design ways of safely giving iron in malarious areas to adults and children to prevent or treat iron deficiency.