A Comparative Study of Artekin With Standard Malarial Treatment Regimes in Afghanistan

Summary

Malaria is a major public health problem in many provinces of Afghanistan the failure rate of chloroquine (CQ) and amodiaquine (AQ) treated Plasmodium falciparum(Pf) malaria has risen to more than 60% overall and as high as 90% in Jalalabad. CQ remains fully effective against P vivax, and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) remains effective against P falciparum (10-15% of cases fail to cure). The current malaria treatment protocol still continuing CQ for P.vivax and adopted Artmisinine based combination therapy (ACT) for treating (Pf) malaria, as most than 50% malaria has being diagnosed clinically, so due to this and other operational reasons the protocol needs to be simplified.

By comparing 56 day PCR corrected cure rate of DHA-PPQ with the standard treatment regimen as primary objective and comparing the safety, gametocytecidal effect and parasite clearance time as secondary objectives, our study titled: Randomized, Open Label, controlled, non-inferiority clinical trial for comparison of Efficacy \& safety, will provide scientific evidence to lead the simplification and improvement of the standard malaria treatment regimen in Afghanistan; to adopt a policy of treating both vivax and falciparum malaria with the same drug regimen.

With a significance level (α) = 0.05 and a power=80%, the calculated sample size is 274 per study arm. Therefore about1100 patients (274 per study-arm: 548 patients with falciaprum malaria and 548 patients with vivax malaria) will be recruited in Malaria reference Centers (MRCs) of three malaria endemic provinces (Nangarhar in the east, Thakhar in the north-east and Faryab in the north-west of country) after signing written inform consent form, according the inclusion and exclusion criteria and will be treated as out patients by giving the randomized drug dose under observation of study team and followed-up daily for 3 days (as treatment course of either arm is once daily dose for three days) and after than weekly up to day 56. and the study is planed to conducted in 3 provinces of Afghanistan for approximately 2 years.

Patients will be assessed clinically as well necessary laboratory tests will be performed and all the bio-medical findings will be recorded in special patient case record form, the electronic form of which will be broth to Trop. Med of Mahidol University for final analysis. The patients will be receiving the reasonable transportation cost for follow-up visits as well as one bed-net at the end of enrollment.

Conditions

• Uncomplicated Falciparum Malaria
• Vivax Malaria

Interventions

DRUG

Dihydroartemisinin + Piperaquine (Artekin)

An adult dose consists of four doses of two tablets, given at 0, 8, 24 and 48 h. The approximate total adult dose is 6/48 mg/kg (DHA/PPQ). For children, a dose of 1.6/12.8 mg/kg is given at the same time intervals; this dosage will be obtained by dissolving the tablets in 5 ml of water.

DRUG

artesunate-sulphadoxin/pyrimethamine, chloroquine

The standard treatment will be in accordance with that in Afghanistan

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Wellcome Trust

  collaborator OTHER

• Ministry of public Health Afghanistan

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Oxford

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Ghulam R Awab, MD · Provincial Malaria Control Centers (MRC)

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

3 Months

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2007-07-31

Primary Completion

2010-02-28

Completion

2010-02-28

Countries

• Afghanistan

Study Locations