Medicine for Malaria

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QUESTION

is rotam and maladar malaria medicine?

ANSWER

I have never heard of Rotam, but Maladar is the brand name of a combination sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, and is used to treat malaria. However, it should be noted that it is not recommended by the World Health Organization as a first-line treatment option, due to concerns about drug resistance, and also lack of efficacy against certain types of malaria.

Instead, first-line recommended treatment is of an artemisinin-based combination therapy, or ACTs, which combine an artemisinin derivative (such as artesunate, artemether or dihyrdoartemisinin) with another anti-malarial drug, such as lumefantrine, piperaquine or mefloquine. Common brand names include Coartem, Lonart and Duo-Cotecxin.

Malaria Diagnosis

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QUESTION

My body is getting hotter after taking artesunate and mtivitamen tablet, the pain subsides, but later in the evening my body starts getting hotter, I have taken almost four artesunate, yet the body pain and headache refuse to go, pls sir is it malaria or what.

ANSWER

Unfortunately the symptoms of malaria are quite general, and just having a fever could be a sign of malaria but also of many other diseases. You should go to a doctor or clinic to have a blood test—there, they will take some of your blood and look at it under the microscope to determine whether you have malaria parasites in your blood. If you do, they will give you appropriate treatment—it is actually not recommended to take artesunate by itself, and rather it should be taken together with a secondary anti-malarial drug, in a combination known as an artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT).

Common forms of ACTs available in Africa include artemether-lumefantrine (sold as Alu, Lonart or Coartem) and dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (sold as Artekin or Duo-Cotecxin). Artesunate comes in combination with amodiaquine, and is often abbreviated as ASAQ.

If you do not get properly diagnosed in a medical facility, you risk treating yourself with unnecessary drugs if in fact you actually have another infection, or you might find you are giving yourself the wrong type of treatment for your malaria infection.

New Treatment for Malaria

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QUESTION

New treatment for malaria?

ANSWER

The most recently developed type of treatment for malaria actually has very ancient origins. The herb wormwood (Artemisia annua) has been used in ancient Chinese medicine for hundreds, even thousands, of years to cure certain fevers.

In the 1970s, a Chinese research program intensively sought new medications against malaria, as part of their Vietnam war effort. They re-discovered wormwood, and from it isolated the compound artemisinin, which is highly effective against malaria parasites in the blood, and kills them very quickly. Due to its quick action against malaria, there was concern that use of artemisinin alone would lead to resistance developing rapidly in the malaria parasite, as was seen with chloroquine in many parts of the world. As such, the World Health Organisation recommended that artemisinin should only be used in combination with another anti-malarial drug with a longer lasting action, to prevent resistance.

A number of such compounds, containing artemisinin derivatives and a second anti-malarial, have now been developed. These are collectively called “artemisinin-based combination therapies,” or ACTs. Some of the main artemisinin compounds used in these drugs are artemether, artesunate and dihydroartemisinin, and the brand names of the drugs as they are marketed (in combination with other compounds, such as lumefantrine, piperaquine and pyronaridine) include Coartem, Pyramax and Duo-Cotecxin.