Comparing Treatments for Malaria

¶ … Treatment of Malaria Halliday and her team (2014) studied the effect of intermittent screening and treatment or IST on malaria among young students in a low-to-moderate transmission setting in Kenya. The main goal of the study was to improve the volunteer children's cognitive development and overall health. Specifically, it aimed at determining the benefit of alternative therapies against malaria and the impact of adjusting treatment to the intensity of the disease, which are not adequately explored ( Halliday et al.).

The intervention was conducted on a group of 5,233 school children in 101 government primary schools in Kenya from 2010 to 2012 (Halliday et al., 2014). They were selected at random from 5 classes and then followed up for two years. Once a year, public health workers screen the children with rapid diagnostic tests or RDTs whether they had symptoms or not. Those found positive for the tests were treated with six doses of artemether-lumefantrine or AL. The trial was not blinded (Halliday et al.).

Of the 88.83% screen school children at each round, 17% were found positive by RDT (Halliday et al., 2014). The primary outcomes were anemia and sustained attentions while the secondary outcomes were malaria parasitaemia and cognitive improvement. As applied in this particular location in Kenya, intermittent screening treatment was found ineffective in the improving the cognitive performance or overall health of the selected volunteer children.

The researchers theorized that the lack of impact could have been the defined geographical differences in transmission, rapid re-infection after receiving AL treatment regimen, the inconsistent dependability of RDTs and the potential contribution of malaria to the development of anemia among the volunteers in this setting (Halliday et al.). This study, thus, provided evidence of the lack of health or education benefits from internment screening treatments or IST with ALat least in this particular setting (Halliday et al., 2014). It also found that many of those screened did not require treatment.

Those who needed treatment lived in places where malarial transmission was high. In these areas, re-infection was also fast and occurred between screening periods. On account of these conditions, no lasting gain was obtainable from treatment. But nonetheless, schools, which use RDTs to screen for malaria may develop appropriate methods to identify potential hotspots for community action. Schools may conduct surveys to determine the heterogeneities of malarial transmission in a larger area in a more frequent and cheaper way than community surveys.

These results may be useful in identifying local transmission heterogeneities. They can be used in creating targeted-community-wide interventions like localized indoor residual screening and killing malaria-carrying mosquito larvae twice a year in order to monitor the effectiveness of these interventions (Halliday et al.). Other Treatment/Management Options In vitro Drug Combination The malaria sybr green-based fluorescence or MSF assay was evaluated in the lab in combination with certain drugs for sensitivity (Co et al., 2009).

Synergistic antovaquone and proguanil, indifferent choloquine and arithromycin, and antagonistic chloroquine and atovaquone were used with MSF against malaria strains. Each drug was tested and calculated at 50% inhibitory concentrations. Isobologram analysis and fractional inhibitory concentration indicated the reaction pattern of each drug for each combination. The research also determined the ability of the MSF assay to trace the characteristics of mixed parasite population. Simply stated, it showed the capacity of the MSF assay in distinguishing between single and mixed parasite strains (Co et al.).

D6 and W2 strains of malaria were co-cultured with anti-malarial drugs, using the assay, to simulate mixed infections (Co et al., 2009). The sensitive and resistant parasites from genetically heterogenous populations could be detected. The study concluded that the MSF assay could be used as a reliable anti-malarial drug combination screening. It could also be used as an important method in distinguishing homogenous from heterogenous parasite stains (Co et al.).

A Computer-Vision Diagnostic Tool for Malaria The traditional manual evaluation of blood films in diagnosing malaria requires the effort of skilled personnel, time- consuming, subject to error, and repetitious (Linder et al. 2014). In order to simplify diagnosis but come up with reliable results, there was need for a method, which would use computer vision in detecting and visualizing only the most relevant sample portions of digitized blood smears (Linder et al.). Linder and her team (2014) secured giemsa-stained thin blood films of 27 infected volunteers and 20 uninfected volunteers for the experiment.

These specimens were digitally scanned and tests on 31 samples from 19 of the infected and 12 of the un-infected controls. A group of 128 likely parasite regions was created from every digitized part of a blood smear. Two microscopist experts examined the regions on a tablet computer to determine if the volunteer patient.