Antimalarial Drugs: Age of the Artemisinins

Antimalarial drugs are medicines that prevent or treat malaria, a disease which takes a great toll on human health and well-being, particularly in tropical regions including Africa south of the Sahara, South and Southeast Asia, Oceania, and parts of the Americas. In recent years, strains of Plasmodium have become increasingly resistant to more antimalarial drugs and researchers have stepped up efforts to revise antimalarial drug policies and develop new antimalarial strategies. Resistance has arisen to all classes of antimalarial (chloroquine, amodiaquine, mefloquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine) except, as yet, definitively to the artemisinin derivatives. In order to prevent widespread resistance, the concept of antimalarial combination therapy (CT) has been employed and a global resistance surveillance system (World Antimalarial Resistance Networks) has been established. This book explores the use of these drugs in current health care.