Malaria drug success

Press, 25 August 1983, Page 15

Malaria drug success

NZPA Hagerstown An experimental drug appears to be effective in controlling malaria, which kills up to a million children a year, says the head of a United States Government team that tested the new substance on volunteers.

The drug appears to be very promising, said Mr Thomas Cosgriff, who headed the research team at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in western Maryland. The drug, so far listed only as WR180.409, was tested on 22 volunteers who were injected with falciparum parasites, one-celled organisms spread by mosquitoes which cause a strain

of malaria. Once they showed symptoms of the disease, the volunteers were given decreasing doses of the drug to determine the minimum dose that would be effective in fighting malaria.

The volunteers remained in the hospital at Fort Detrick for about two weeks and had further examinations for an extra eight weeks, he said. They were paid SUSISOO. Mr Cosgriff said that the volunteers became ill, but the extent of the illness was quite variable. In many cases, it resembles a bad case of influenza, with headaches, muscle aches, fever and chills.

“It is a single-day treatment,” Mr Cosgriff said of

the experimental drug. “It might even be possible to treat subjects with a 750 mg single dose. “The next phase is to test the drug in Thailand where there is endemic malaria.” He said that those tests could begin over the next few months.