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

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.