Applied Technology

Gospel for Malaria Patients

The research team headed by Prof. Chen Xiaoping at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences explored the possibility of using HIV protease inhibitors (HIV-PIs) as antimalarial agents through in vitro and in vivo (mouse) model research during the pass few years. They discovered and confirmed that HIV-PIs (ritonavir, indinavir, etc) could restrain the reproduction of malaria parasites and behaved synergy with chloroquine. Through a Chinese rhesus monkey model study, they further verify that indinavir, one of the HIV-PIs displays a good efficacy in the treatment and prevention of monkey malaria. Although indinavir alone can not cure monkey malaria, and it requires to use chloroquine or to combine with chloroquine to thoroughly cure malaria. This series of research have important clinical implication as shown below: 1. About 300 million people in the world are infected with malaria each year, and the vast majority of them are infected with the chloroquine-resistant strains of malaria parasites, thus, chloroquine alone is ineffective in such a circumstance; however, combination use of indinavir may completely recover the curative effect of chloroquine. 2. Africa and south-east Asia are the worst-hit areas of AIDS and malaria, and co-infection of both is common. An indinavir–containing antiviral regimen may “kill two birds with one stone”: a treatment for HIV infection may reduce the malaria morbidity and mortality in co-endemic regions. Recently, Antimicrob Agents Chemother, an official journal of American Society of Microbiology published the relevant paper of this research team.