Malaria in infants aged less than six months - is it an area of unmet medical need?

Malaria Journal

Opinion

Honorat Francis Lalya¹  Alain Nahum²  Bernard Brabin³  Serign Jawo Ceesay⁴  Kalifa Bojang⁴  Joseph Okebe⁴  Umberto D’Alessandro⁵  David Ubben⁶  Makie Taal⁷  Aja Adam Jagne Sonko⁷  Lamine Koivogui⁸  Eugene Kaman Lama⁸  Moussa Keita⁸  Kamal Hamed⁹ 

[1] Centre National Hospitalier Universitaire Hubert K. Maga, Cotonou, Benin;Centre de Recherches Entomologiques de Cotonou, Cotonou, Benin;Child and Reproductive Health Group, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place, L35QA, Liverpool, UK;Medical Research Council Unit, PO Box 273, Banjul, The Gambia;Medical Research Council Unit, PO Box 273, Banjul, The Gambia;Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nationalestraat 155, 2000, Antwerp, Belgium;Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), PO Box 1826, 20 rte de Pré-Bois, 1215, Geneva 15, Switzerland;Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, The Quadrangle, Banjul, The Gambia;Ministry of Health, BP 6623, Conakry, Guinea;Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, One Health Plaza, 07936-01080, East Hanover, NJ, USA;

关键词: Malaria;    Neonate;    Congenital;    Prevalence;    Parasitaemia;    Artemisinin-based combination therapy;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-11-400

 received in 2012-10-11, accepted in 2012-11-28,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Despite the protection provided by several factors, including maternal antibodies, the burden of malaria in young infants may be higher than previously thought. Infants with congenital or neonatal malaria may have a different clinical presentation than older children, and diagnosis may be confused with other neonatal diseases due to an overlap of clinical manifestations. In addition, there is little information on the use of artemisinin-based combination therapy in young infants. There is the need for a more accurate estimate of the parasite prevalence and the incidence of clinical malaria in infants under 6 months old, as well as a better characterization of risk factors, pharmacokinetic profiles, safety and efficacy of currently available anti-malarial treatments, in order to develop evidence-based treatment guidelines for this population.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© D'Alessandro et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.