Active clinical trials for "Malaria"

Drug efficacy testing is one of the most important tasks that is routinely undertaken by the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) in Tanzania and has been recommended by the World health Organisation to monitor the efficacy of artemisinin based combination therapy (ACT) and possibly detect evolution/emergency of tolerance/resistance to these drugs. Currently, Artemether-lumefantrine (ALu) is the only ACT recommended by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and therefore testing of new ACTs such as dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DHA-PQ) is important because alternative drugs are urgently required. Meanwhile, NMCP is revising the guidelines for treatment of malaria in Tanzania and DHA-PQ has been earmarked as an alternative ACT to be used together with ALu. However, efficacy and safety data of DHA-PQ is missing since no studies have been done in Tanzania. Thus, a study is proposed to assess the efficacy and safety of DHA-PQ Vs ALu and provide important data which will enable the NMCP to make informed decisions; and possibly recommend DHA-PQ in the new Malaria treatment guidelines as the second line drug for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in the country.

This study is designed to compare the effectiveness of reactive focal drug administration (RFDA) using dihydroartemisinin+piperaquine (DHAP) versus reactive focal test and treat (RFTAT) using artemether+lumefantrine (AL) as a routine process for identifying and eliminating malaria transmission as measured through achieving zero seropositivity in children under five in Southern Province, Zambia. These two strategies are potential candidates for expanded malaria operational surveillance and elimination for low malaria transmission areas.

This is a single-centre, open-label study using P. falciparum-induced blood stage malaria (IBSM) infection to assess the infectivity of sexual life cycle stages of the malaria parasite (gametocytes) to mosquito vectors. Previous clinical studies have shown that treatment of participants with the antimalarial drug piperaquine, in addition to effectively clearing asexual (pathogenic) stages of the malaria life cycle, induces the production of gametocytes in the blood. The propensity of piperaquine to induce gametocytemia will be employed in this study to assess gametocyte infectivity to Anopheles mosquitoes. For this purpose, experimental mosquito feeding directly on participants and artificial membrane mosquito feeding will be performed. The study will be conducted in 3 cohorts (n=2 per cohort). Subsequent cohorts will not commence until at least after day 28 of the previous cohort and review by Safety Review Team. This interval will also allow cohorting of experimental infection of mosquitoes to optimise logistics and enable iterative improvements in the system if applicable.

This is a study assessing safety and efficacy of current national guidelines for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in Bangladesh as well as to assess the G6PD status among the enrolled patients.

Plasmodium vivax can be cause of severe malaria and mortality. There are serious public health implications associated with cases of P. vivax resistant to Chloroquine in the Americas as well there are efforts of many countries to eliminate this disease. In this way, it is critically important to evaluate an alternative radical cure treatment efficient to amazon scenario. The objectives of this trial are to demonstrate the superiority of adequate parasitological response at D42 of Dihydroartemisinin plus Piperaquine (DHA-PQP or Eurartesim®) versus Chloroquine and to evaluate the proportion of failure until D180 considering different starting days of Primaquine (0.50 mg/kg/day) for 14 days. It is an open, 4 arms, randomised, comparative trial. Total of 460 patients are initially planned to be included. To demonstrate the superiority of DHA-PQP compared to Chloroquine, the 95% confidence interval of the difference observed between both treatment success rates will be determined. Each recurrence will be passively and actively detected for 180 days.

The First in Human (FIH) study is separated into two parts: The first part is a Single Ascending Dose (SAD), double-blinded, randomized and placebo-controlled, including 8 cohorts of 8 subjects (2 placebo and 6 on active drug). The second part is a food effect cohort with an open-labelled, randomized fed/fasted cross-over design. The main objectives of the study are to confirm safety, tolerability and Pharmacokinetics (PK) of P218 in healthy volunteers.

This project will determine the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) of an extended artemether-lumefantrine (AL) dosing regimen in HIV-infected children on efavirenz (EFV)-based antiretroviral therapy (ART) that is designed to improve the PK exposure and treatment efficacy of this artemisinins-based combination therapy (ACT) regimen. Our overarching goal is to inform the best treatment guidelines for young children in Africa. HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected children will be enrolled for intensive PK studies, as well as additional children for population PK studies to enhance association analyses with clinical outcomes.

Malaria and HIV are found in the same regions of the world and developing countries are most affected by both diseases. For malaria, new drugs have been introduced called ACTs. These drugs are effective against malaria but little is known about how the levels of these drugs in blood relate to how effective these drugs are. For HIV, a new drug has been developed called dolutegravir which has potential to be widely used in developing countries. This proposal will explore how dolutegravir affects the drug levels of these antimalarial drugs and vice versa. In total, 46 healthy volunteers will participate in this study.

Preliminary studies have supported the background efficacy of local standard anti-malarial medications in the treatment of uncomplicated knowlesi malaria, however this has not been tested systematically and there are no current WHO treatment guidelines for this infection. There are both health cost benefits to a more rapidly acting agent, and due to difficulties with microscopic identification there may be more effective treatment for all malaria species if an aligned treatment guideline could be supported. In addition, no therapeutic efficacy monitoring of current first line anti-malarials used for the treatment of P. vivax malaria have been conducted in Malaysia. The investigators aim to test whether the fixed combination of artesunate-mefloquine is superior to chloroquine in order to define the optimal treatment for both uncomplicated P. knowlesi and P. vivax infection in both adults and children in this region.

Because the artemisinins are the most potent antimalarial drugs, the reduction in parasite numbers is rapid. Therefore, early measures of reducing parasite counts are needed. This study will look at conventional markers of parasite reduction e.g. parasite clearance time, parasite reduction ratio, and the time to achieve a fall of 50%, 90% and 99% of the pre-treatment parasitaemia. Defining artemisinin resistance requires the use of artesunate (AS) alone because it is now appreciated that the partner drug in a combination treatment has a significant impact on the rate of parasite clearance. This study will dose patients for 3 days with AS alone (or longer until parasites clear) and measure the parasite count frequently in order to be able to define an accurate regression line of a graph of the natural logarithm of the parasite count (Y axis) versus time (X axis). This will be followed by a full course of an artemisinin combination therapy (ACT). Two different dose regimens of artesunate will be compared at all sites except those in western Cambodia, as unpublished observations from the Thai-Myanmar border suggest the standard lower daily dose of 2mg/kg may enable the earlier detection of low level resistance than a 4mg/kg daily dose.