artemisinins

Malaria is a pervasive disease that affects millions of lives each year in equatorial regions of the world. During the erythrocytic phase of the parasite life cycle, Plasmodium falciparum invade red blood cells, where they catabolize hemoglobin and sequester the released toxic heme as innocuous hemozoin crystals. Artemisinin-class drugs are activated in vivo by newly-released heme, which creates a carbon-centered radical that markedly reduces parasite density.

This was an open label study with the main objectives of evaluating the clinical features, the risk factors for, the temporal changes in haematocrit and the outcomes of a LAA in malarious children treated with artesunate-amodiaquine (AA), artemether-lumefantrine (AL) or dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DHP).