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Anti-Malarial drug shows promise in human study

Accepted submission by RandomFactor at 2019-03-12 00:05:29 from the or ship over a few tons of Tabasco dept.
Science

According to research published March 11 in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology, the experimental drug DSM265 cured seven volunteers of infection [sciencedaily.com] by Plasmodium falciparum (the deadliest of the five human infecting Malaria parasite species) in a clinical study using a single oral dose.

The study confirmed findings of earlier studies. Only minor effects (abdominal tenderness, skin rash, itching) were observed in the previous or current studies.

The single dose aspect is crucial because currently,

it takes three days of combination therapy to cure malaria. "A single dose cure would provide a treatment that could improve compliance, reduce development of resistance, and eventually contribute to the eradication of this disease," said coauthor Jörg Möhrle,... Associate Professor of Infection Biology and Epidemiology, University of Basel, Switzerland.

Work is ongoing to improve the formulation of DSM265 and find a companion drug.

Cure notwithstanding, a companion drug is needed to prevent development of resistance. Resistance is a numbers game, caused by the emergence of random mutations that block a drug's action. The chance of random mutations arising concurrently to block both drugs' action is vanishingly small.

The end goal, of course, is to eradicate the parasite completely. Malaria causes over 200 million infections annually and kills between half and three-quarters of a million humans per year.


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