Paris: Giving babies a cheap, standard
malaria treatment at key points in their first months of life
can reduce their risk of falling sick with the disease, trials
reported in The Lancet today say.
Investigators give the green light to this novel
preemptive approach, although they also sound a warning about
its effectiveness in areas where the malaria parasite is
resistant to the drug.
The technique has already been tried successfully
among pregnant women in areas where malaria is a major
problem, raising hopes that it could be adapted for the very
young who bear the brunt of this disease.
Intermittent Preventative Treatment in Infants (IPTi)
entails giving tiny doses of an antimalarial at several points
in the first months of a child`s life.
Usually, the drug is used after infection to kill the
Plasmodium falciparum parasite, transmitted in a mosquito
bite, which causes malaria.
A review of six published trials of IPTi, three of
them in the West African state of Ghana and the others in
Mozambique and Tanzania, found that IPTi, using
sulphadoxine-pyrimethadine, was both safe and effective.
Nearly 4,000 infants were given IPTi while 4,000
others were given a harmless, lookalike placebo.
There was no difference in the number of the deaths in
the two groups. But there was a significant protective effect
among the IPTi infants when it came to the risk of sickness in
their first year of life.
Bureau Report