Study Finds Single-Dose Malaria Drug As Effective As Standard Treatment
South Korean drugmaker Shin Poong Pharmaceuticals' drug Pyramax "proved as effective as Novartis' leading treatment Coartem in a clinical trial, researchers said on Friday, although an outside expert said the findings had limitations," Reuters reports (Hirschler, 4/22).
Researchers tested the new treatment, which is a combination of pyronaridine and artesunate, "at seven sites in Africa and three in Southeast Asia alongside the standard drugs, artemether and lumefantrine," Agence France-Presse writes. "A total of 1,272 malaria patients were enrolled, with 849 randomly assigned to pyronaridine-artesunate, which was taken once a day over three days, and 423 to artemether-lumefantrine, taken twice daily, also for three days."
The study results, published Friday in the journal Lancet, found that both drugs "were equally effective in clearing out malarial parasites in the blood at a 28-day mark, and had an equal number of reported side effects," AFP reports. The researchers recommend that pyronaridine-artesunate be incorporated into malaria treatment programs since it "costs less than one dollar to treat an adult and less than 50 cents for a child," the news service writes (4/22).
An accompanying Lancet comment by Francois Henri Nosten of the Mahidol-Oxford University Tropical Medicine Research Programme "said a limitation of the study was that it consisted of many older African children and adults who had probably acquired some malaria immunity," according to Reuters. "He also raised concerns about patients on Pyramax having raised liver enzymes, a possible signal of liver toxicity" (4/22). Writing in the Lancet, Nosten said, "My criticism is that it might satisfy developed-world regulatory requirements but it provides limited information of value to the clinician in the field" (4/24).
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