MALARIA TREATMENT FOUND TO BE SAFE FOR PREGNANT WOMEN

A new approach to treatment for pregnant women suffering from malaria in West Africa has been found to be both safe and effective, according to a randomized trial carried out by a team from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) based in Ghana.

Treating women with the drug amodiaquine, either alone or in combination with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), was found to almost completely eliminate the malaria parasite and to cause no serious side effects in the women being treated. The study was carried out among pregnant women who attended antenatal clinics at a district hospital in Ghana.

Malaria parasites are becoming increasingly resistant to choloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) across Africa and there is a need to find new drugs. Most countries in Africa are adopting artesunate-based combination therapy (ACT) as the preferred first line treatment, but there is insufficient information as to its safety of ACT during pregnancy. There are concerns that ACT might have a deleterious effect on the developing embryo, particularly when given during the first trimester of pregnancy, according to LSHTM.

Researchers screened pregnant women with a gestational age of 16 weeks or more for the malaria parasite, and those who tested positive (900 women) were enrolled and randomly treated with four different regimens. Parasitological failure by day 28 was 14 percent, 11 percent, 3 percent and 0 percent in the women receiving choloroquine, SP, amodiaquine, and amodiaquine plus SP, respectively.