Scientific Articles

Severe malaria can be deadly and requires treatment with intravenous artesunate (IVAS). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided IVAS starting April 1, 2019 for all patients with severe malaria in the United States. This study describes the safety and effectiveness of IVAS in these patients.

Several promising antimalarial drugs are currently being tested in human trials, such as artefenomel, cipargamin, ferroquine and ganaplacide. Many of these compounds were identified using high throughput screens against a single species of human malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, under the assumption that effectiveness against all malaria species will be similar, as has been observed for other antimalarial drugs. However, using our in vitro adapted line, we demonstrated recently that P. knowlesi is significantly less susceptible than P. falciparum to some new antimalarial drugs (e.g., cipargamin and DSM265), and more susceptible to others (e.g., ganaplacide). There is, therefore, an urgent need to determine the susceptibility profile of all human malaria species to the current generation of antimalarial compounds.

Despite adequate treatment, recent studies have hypothesized that malaria may affect long-term cardiovascular function. We aimed to investigate the long-term risk of cardiovascular events and death in individuals with a history of imported malaria in Denmark.

Monocytes play an important role in the host defense against Plasmodium vivax as the main source of inflammatory cytokines and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mROS). Here, we show that monocyte metabolism is altered during human P. vivax malaria, with mitochondria playing a major function in this switch. The process involves a reprograming in which the cells increase glucose uptake and produce ATP via glycolysis instead of oxidative phosphorylation.