The Sub-Saharan Africa threatens millions of people's life because of the overlapping burdens brought both by malaria and HIV. A Yale-led study in Africa is researching about the impact made by HIV therapy in antimalarial therapy effectiveness.
The combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) is used to surpress the replication of HIV, In return, the disease will have slower progression. However, this treatment which causes an elevation in immune system is associated with high risk of diseases not related to AIDS in HIV positive individuals, Medical Xpress reported.
Antiretroviral therapy also change the effectiveness of antimalarial therapy in patients who are treated for HIV and malaria. The significant change is now being studied by one of Yale University's researcher.
The new study which is led by Sunil Parikh, M.D., has results published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. The results shows that some ART treatments alter the effectiveness of an antimalarial called 'artemether-lumefantrine' which is used widely worldwide for treating malaria. Together with Dr. Parikh are 11 other scientists which came from the University of California in San Francisco and Africa, Yale School of Public Health reported.
Dr. sunil Parikh is a researcher in Yale School of Public Health and also an assistant professor in Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases.
Malaria and HIV are two of the major health concerns in the region where the study is conducted. In the said region in the sub-Saharan Africa, 25 million people were positive in HIV. In 2013, there were a total of 198 million people recorded with malaria cases. This merely shows that further study with regards to co-infection is really needed in the region.
International efforts focused towards the African region significantly reduced the number of malaria incidents, however, the disease is still considered as a major killer. In 2013, there were about 600,000 deaths caused by malaria. In Uganda alone, people are infected by this mosquito-borne parasite for up to six times per year, on the average.
