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Exp Parasitol 2022 May 10;238:108262. Epub 2022 May 10.

Laboratorio de Investigación en Parasitología, Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Ciudad de México, Mexico. Electronic address:

Malaria is a parasitic disease of global importance due to its high annual death toll. The treatment for this infection is difficult for the increase in the populations of parasites resistant to the existing medicines, the development of new antimalarials is urgent needed. Several products developed for the control of malaria from herbalist have had a profound impact, for example, quinine obtained from the bark of the cinchona tree and recently those derived from artemisinin, whose discovery was the reason for the awarding of the 2015 Nobel Prize. Read More

Am J Trop Med Hyg 2022 Apr 11. Epub 2022 Apr 11.

Infectious Diseases Labs (ID Labs), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.

In malaria, rosetting is a phenomenon involving the cytoadherence of uninfected erythrocytes to infected erythrocytes (IRBC) harboring the late erythrocytic stage of Plasmodium spp. Recently, artesunate-stimulated rosetting has been demonstrated to confer a survival advantage to P. falciparum late-stage IRBC. Read More

S Afr Med J 2021 Jun 8;111(8):720-723. Epub 2021 Jun 8.

Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University and Tygerberg Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa.

Herbal medicines made from the bark of the Cinchona tree, and later quinine, have been widely used for centuries to treat medical conditions such as tropical malaria. More recently, chloroquine (CQ) and its synthetic derivatives have been used as antimalarials and to treat systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, and in the past 14 months or so, COVID-19 pneumonia. Anecdotal evidence and the erratic covering through social media of its potential efficacy in the treatment of COVID-19 pneumonia have resulted in the widespread off-label use of CQ in South Africa and worldwide. Read More

J Clin Med 2022 Jan 31;11(3). Epub 2022 Jan 31.

Drug Discovery Lab, Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, Bar Ilan University, Safed 1311502, Israel.

Malaria is a prevalent parasitic disease that is estimated to kill between one and two million people-mostly children-every year. Here, we query PubMed for malaria drug resistance and plot the yearly citations of 14 common antimalarials. Remarkably, most antimalarial drugs display cyclic resistance patterns, rising and falling over four decades. Read More

Front Pharmacol 2021 6;12:707498. Epub 2022 Jan 6.

Artemisinin Research Center, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China.

The WHO recommends Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACTs) as the first-line treatment for malaria. This meta-analysis aims to analyze the effects of artemisinin and its derivatives as well as non-artemisinin drugs on the gametophytes in the host during the treatment of falciparum malaria. Fourteen studies were included in this analysis, and the artemisinin combination drugs involved were: artemether-lumefantrine (AL), artemisinin (AST), artemether-benflumetol (AB), dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine + trimethoprim + primaquine (CV8), amodiaquine + sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (ASP), pyronaridine-phosphate + dihydroartemisinin (PP-DHA), dihydroartemisinin (DHA), and mefloquine + artesunate (MA), with 1702 patients. Read More