Background
Five artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) are currently recommended for treatment of uncomplicated malaria in Africa. Whilst the artemisinin component has a short half-life, the partner drugs give rise to differing durations of post-treatment prophylaxis, protecting from re-infection and reducing transmission. We compared the duration of post-treatment prophylaxis of artemether-lumefantrine (AL), dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DHA-PPQ) and artemisinine-amodiaquine (AS-AQ).
Materials and methods
We pooled the results from analyses of 6 trials (1651 individuals) of AL versus DHA-PPQ and from 18 trials (5060 individuals) of AL versus AS-AQ. The time to re-infection after treatment was used to estimate the duration of post-treatment protection accounting for the variation in transmission intensity between settings. This duration was then used in a mathematical model of malaria transmission to estimate the comparative public health impact of each drug used for 1st-line treatment in low, medium and high transmission settings.
Results
We estimated a mean duration of post-treatment protection of 10.7 days (95% CI: 10.2-11.2) and 13.8 days (95% CI: 10.2-22.8) for AL from the two analyses, 29.4 days (95% CI: 16.4-48.8) for DHA-PPQ, and 11.8 days (95% CI: 11.0-12.5) for ASAQ. There was no substantial difference in the public health impact of using AL versus AS-AQ. Use of DHA-PPQ for 1st-line treatment averted 8.3 additional cases per 1,000 people (0.8% of all cases) over 5 years compared to AL or AS-AQ. This protective effect was stronger in areas of high transmission as well as in seasonal settings.
Conclusions
While it is important to maintain a diverse set of first-line treatments for uncomplicated malaria, our results suggest that partner drugs with a longer half-life could be beneficial in reducing repeat episodes and onward transmission, particularly in high and seasonal transmission areas.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Consortia
Rights and permissions
This article is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
About this article
Cite this article
Bretscher, M.T., Griffin, J.T., Hugo, P. et al. A comparison of the duration of post-treatment protection of artemether-lumefantrine, dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine and artesunate-amodiaquine for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria. Malar J 13 (Suppl 1), P19 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-13-S1-P19
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-13-S1-P19