New clinical trials conducted in Africa in the fight against malaria
Malaria is a potentially fatal disease that caused 400,000 deaths worldwide in 2019. iStock / RolfAasa
Text by: RFI Follow
6 mins
Malaria killed nearly 400,000 people worldwide in 2019, the vast majority of children under the age of 5.
Although fatal, this parasite can be treated with combined artemisinin treatments, also called dual therapy.
But the problem with these treatments is that the parasites tend to resist them more and more frequently.
So some researchers are working on the development of new drugs and trials are currently being carried out on 1,600 children under 5 in Mali, Ghana, Gabon and Benin…
Publicity
Read more
The clinical trials carried out in these four African countries are testing life-size drugs still based on artemisinin, no longer in bi, but in triple therapy.
"
The objective of the project is to provide proof that this triple therapy will be effective and well tolerated by patients, that is to say with few additional side effects compared to the dual therapy, and the absence of abnormalities in plasma drug concentrations
, ”explains researcher Jérôme Clain, who initiated these trials.
Triple therapy is a treatment, as its name suggests, based on three molecules.
The first, artemisinin eliminates most of the parasites in a few hours, the second continues eradication and the third reinforces the second by killing resistant parasites.
And it is this third molecule, atovaquone proguanil, better known under the name of malarone in combination of the two others, which is the novelty of these tests.
Its property: block the transmission of the parasite for the duration of the treatment.
"
The advantage of atovaquone proguanil is that it has a double action, at the same time it prevents transmission and in addition it contributes to the reduction of symptoms
", suggests Jérôme Clain.
As combination drugs already exist on the market, the cost of this new triple therapy would be affordable for countries on the African continent.
Burkina Faso vaccine candidate sparks hope
In Burkina Faso, researchers from the Nanoro Clinical Research Unit and their partner at the University of Oxford have released the first results of trials on a candidate vaccine against malaria. The clinical trial of this vaccine candidate has just passed its second phase. The R21 / Matrix-M has shown very high efficiency. This is already
raising
hope among those involved in the fight against malaria, reports our correspondent in Ouagadougou,
Yaya Boudani
.
A total of 450 children aged 5 to 17 months were recruited from 24 villages during these initial trials.
The researchers said that over 12 months of follow-up, the vaccine was found to be 77% effective in the group that received the highest dose, and 71% in the group that received the lowest dose, without no serious vaccine-related side effects were observed.
These results have never been matched by any other vaccine candidate.
This raises a lot of hope among health specialists.
It is also the first vaccine candidate to achieve the 75% efficacy target set by the World Health Organization.
“
These are impressive results.
We look forward to the next step which is the phase III clinical trial to confirm with large scale data the safety and efficacy results of a vaccine which is highly indispensable for the control of malaria in our region
” , underlines Professor Halidou Tinto, principal investigator of the trial.
The last phase of testing will begin soon.
4,800 children aged 5 to 36 months will be recruited in four African countries: Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali and Tanzania.
It is after the results of this phase that the vaccine candidate can be approved.
Continue the fight
In the meantime, malaria continues to kill massively in Africa and mainly children under 5 years old. It is therefore essential to continue to fight against on the continent, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, recalls Dr. Moumouni Kinda, director general of a medical NGO which acts on the ground in Central and West Africa to prevent effects of this disease. Over the past year, WHO has recorded an increase in malaria-related mortality from 19,000 to 100,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa.
We have noticed a drop in attendance at the health structures in which we work, this drop could essentially be linked to the fear of the pandemic.
(…) It is true that the Covid is a global emergency so we must invest in the fight against this pandemic but we must continue to fight against other diseases ...
Doctor Moumouni Kinda
Alice Rouja
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Malaria
Health and medicine