Antimalarial Drugs: Age of the Artemisinins

Anti-malarial 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 anti-malarial drugs and researchers have stepped up efforts to revise anti-malarial drug policies and develop new anti-malarial strategies. Resistance has arisen to all classes of antimalarials (chloroquine, amodiaquine, mefloquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine) except, as yet, definitively to the artemisinin derivatives. In order to prevent widespread resistance, the concept of anti-malarial combination therapy (CT) has been employed and a global resistance surveillance system (World Anti-malarial Resistance Networks) has been established. This book explores the use of these drugs in current health care.