Malaria Parasite Clearance: What Are We Really Measuring?

The Interdisciplinary Approaches to Malaria Consortium

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Antimalarial drugs are vital for treating malaria and controlling transmission. Measuring drug efficacy in the field requires large clinical trials and thus we have identified proxy measures of drug efficacy such as the parasite clearance curve. This is often assumed to measure the rate of drug activity against parasites and is used to predict optimal treatment regimens required to completely clear a blood-stage infection. We discuss evidence that the clearance curve is not measuring the rate of drug killing. This has major implications for how we assess optimal treatment regimens, as well as how we prioritise new drugs in the drug development pipeline.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)413-426
Number of pages14
JournalTrends in Parasitology
Volume36
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2020

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