[afro-nets] NYT: New Drug Mix Against Malaria Is Announced

[Leela McCullough <leela@healthnet.org>]

E-DRUG: NYT: New Drug Mix Against Malaria Is Announced
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[Thanks to Jaya Banerji <jbanerji@dndi.org>
Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative]

December 13, 2005

New Drug Mix Against Malaria Is Announced

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/international/13malaria.html
[copied as fair use]

Two simpler, cheaper formulations of anti-malaria drugs will be
available next year, a public-private partnership announced yes-
terday.

The cost will be about half of what the current pills cost and
the new pills will mix large doses of two drugs into one pill,
so adults will take only six pills over three days instead of
the current 24 to 32, said Dr. Bernard Pécoul, executive direc-
tor of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative.

They will also be made in low-dose pills that can be dissolved
in water for infants.

There about 500 million cases of malaria worldwide, and the dis-
ease kills more than a million people each year, many of them
young children.

The new drugs will combine forms of artemisinin, a relatively
new malaria drug developed in China from the sweet wormwood
plant, with one of two established drugs, amodiaquine and meflo-
quine, which act more slowly but linger in the blood.

The same drugs are available now as separate pills packaged to-
gether in plastic blister packs, Dr. Pécoul explained. But pa-
tients in many poor countries have discovered that the artemisi-
nin-based pills taste better and lower fevers faster, so they
take only the ones they like. That encourages the growth of
drug-resistant strains of malaria, he said.

Combining them into one pill required a pharmacological break-
through, he explained. The older drugs tended to release water,
which broke down the artemisinin.

Solving that problem and testing the new pills required several
million dollars, which was provided by the European Union, the
Swiss government, Doctors Without Borders, and in-kind contribu-
tions by some pharmaceutical companies, he said.

Sanofi-Aventis, the world's third-largest pharmaceutical com-
pany, has agreed to produce the amodiaquine-artemisinin combina-
tion and Far-Manguinhos, Brazil's state pharmaceutical labora-
tory, will make the mefloquine one.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative was founded by Doc-
tors Without Borders, the Pasteur Institute of France, the World
Health Organization and research institutes in Brazil, India,
Malaysia and Kenya.

--
Leela McCullough, Ed.D.
Director of Information Services
SATELLIFE
30 California Street, Watertown, MA 02472, USA
Tel: +1-617-926-9400
Fax: +1-617-926-1212
mailto:leela@healthnet.org
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