A pharmacokinetic approach to assess artemisinin–naphthoquine combination therapy for uncomplicated pediatric malaria

Evaluation of: Batty KT, Salman S, Moore BR et al. Artemisinin–naphthoquine combination therapy for uncomplicated pediatric malaria: a pharmacokinetic study. Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 56(5), 2472–2484 (2012).Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) have been adopted as the first line of treatment against malaria in nearly all malaria-endemic countries, mainly as a result of Plasmodium falciparum infection, as this species of malaria parasite has developed resistance to most of the available non-artemisinin antimalarial drugs. Artemisinin–naphthoquine (ART–NQ, also named as ARCO™; Kunming Pharmaceuticals, Kunming, China) is one of the several currently available ACTs that show a promising approach to dealing with drug-resistant malaria rather than monotherapies. Unlike other ACTs, ART–NQ requires either a single-dose treatment or a two-dose treatment within 24 h against uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria; however, this was mainly validated in adults rather than children. Batty et al. performed the first pharmacokinetic study of ART–NQ combination therapy for uncomplicated pediatric malaria, and the authors’ results are described and discussed below.