malaria

LINK

HIV protease inhibitors might work against Malaria

According to Parikh, there is more to the story than the direct antimalarial effects of the HIV drugs. His team has also found that a major reason for the significant anti-malarial protection in HIV patients is due to a beneficial “drug-drug interaction,” between the protease inhibitors and the antimalarial drug, artemether-lumefantrine, the most widely used treatment for malaria in the world.

the article includes this factoid:



Eighty-two percent of the world’s 198 million cases of malaria are in Africa, a WHO report states. Further, according to amfAR, 91 percent of the world’s HIV-infected children live in Africa.

this is important since malaria is becoming more resistant to antibiotics: SciAmerican  blames it on "overuse" but I suspect giving substandard doses because often the medicines are counterfeit (i.e. substandard, fake, or diluted so the dose is lower than the lablel)  might be behind the problem. This article points to drugs from India, but the counterfeits from China are a big problem, especially in SE Asia...

In total, 10.9 percent of the products collected failed an assessment of their active ingredients, 7 percent of which were considered substandard. The rest that failed were falsified, meaning they didn’t contain any active ingredient and were likely counterfeits from China, the researchers said.

they are discussing Cipro treatment in the article, and includes the factoid the Cipro is chemically related to Chloroquin, something I didn't know.

When I came down with a mild case of Falciparum Malaria while taking Chloroquin 35 years ago, I took a sulfa drug mixture. And for cerebral malaria, we used IM or IV Quinine. This is now not used due to resistance.