Drug ‘less effective in malnourished kids’
RESEARCHERS at UCT found the commonly prescribed antimalarial drug less effective in severely malnourished children compared to those who are adequately nourished.
This finding has called for further research into optimising treatment for particularly undernourished children who are vulnerable to contracting malaria.
Professor Karen Barnes from the division of Clinical Pharmacology and head of the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network said: “Although one in three children under 5 years old in sub-Saharan Africa is malnourished, they are usually excluded from studies on malaria treatment.”
Young children are particularly vulnerable to malaria infection: 61% of those who die from malaria worldwide are under 5. Young children who are malnourished are at a much higher risk of contracting the disease and dying from it.
One in three young children from Sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
The physiology of malnourished children, which is different from that of adequately-nourished children, may change the way antimalarial drugs are taken up and distributed by their bodies.
“The dosage regimens recommended for these children don’t seem to be optimal and this increases the chances that treatment will fail for them, which is what we showed in this study,” said Barnes.
The team analysed how the drug behaved over time in terms of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (pharmacokinetics) and its effectiveness (pharmacodynamics).
They looked at data for 399 children with malaria; 131 of them were severely malnourished and they all participated in a clinical trial at two hospitals in Mali and Niger.
Barnes said: “This study is the first to address the challenge of treating malaria in severely malnourished children, specifically.
“It highlights how important it is to make sure that optimised drug doses are developed for undernourished children and other vulnerable groups.
The dosage regimens recommended don’t seem to be optimal Professor Karen Barnes ANTIMALARIAL RESISTANCE NETWORK