New antimalarial drug launched in Kenya

A new antimalarial drug was launched in Kenya at a ceremony held in Nairobi on Wednesday.

The new drug, Duo-Cotecxin, is a major breakthrough in the field of Artemisinin Based Combination, said Dr. Claude Faurant, senior vice-president of Holley-Cotec, a Chinese-based pharmaceutical company dedicated in the fight against malaria.

"It is an association of a third generation artemisinin derivative, dihydroartemisinin (DHA) to a new compound of the quinoleine group, piperaquine," Dr. Faurant told attendants of the launching ceremony.

Malaria is the world's worst parasitic infection accounting for 300-500 million clinical cases, more than 80% occurring in sub- Saharan Africa.

"Resistance to antimalarial drugs is increasing largely due to easy availability of substandard generic drugs which are cheap and are easily abused," Director of Kenya's Center for Tropical and Travel Medicine, Dr. Charles Nakhungu Chunge, said at the launching.

"Good drugs to treat malaria effectively and efficiently are urgently required if eradication and control of this dreadful disease is envisaged," Dr. Chunge said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has strongly recommended the use of Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT) in the treatment of malaria in order to protect artemisinin derivatives which remain the only truly efficient antimalarials available.

"Over the last few years there has been a paradigm shift in Africa towards universal adoption of artemisinin based combination therapy. In Kenya, since 2004 there has been a change in policy to use of ACT but has yet to be adopted due to various reasons, financial constraint being major one." said Kirana M. Bhatt, senior lecturer in the Department of Medicine, University of Nairobi.

Duo-Cotecxin is such ACT which fulfills all the requirements necessary to be an excellent alternative to the classical drugs, Faurant told doctors.

"Duo-Cotecxin's proportion of the two compounds has proved to be the most efficient out of 4 different trials and was demonstrated to have a synergistic effect," Faurant said.

"Preclinical studies, including long and short term toxicity in several animal species confirmed the perfect safety of Duo- Cotecxin, in particular on nervous and cardiac system; it also demonstrated the distribution of the product, mainly in the organs rich in haematopoietic tissues, such as liver and spleen," he said.

"Final results show that the efficacy rate was over 95% with perfect tolerance; only mild adverse effects were reported in less than 2% of the cases." Faurant said.

Malaria has the greatest death toll on very young children, pregnant women and the non-immunes. New analyses show that malaria accounts for 20 percent of all young child deaths in Africa, 30 percent of all clinic visits and 25 percent of all hospital admission in endemic countries.

Holley-Cotec pharmaceutical group is a research based company developing original compounds such as the well known Cotecxin. It belongs to a big multinational group HolleyPharm Group, number one in the world for the production of artemisinin.

Source: Xinhua