Dennis Kyle, PhD

Tampa, FL (Sept. 6, 2007) — A USF public health professor will contribute data to a new global network to monitor antimalarial drug resistance and guide malaria treatment and prevention policies.

Dennis Kyle, PhD, a professor in the College of Public Health’s Department of Global Health, was among the authors of a series of articles published online Sept. 6 in the Malaria Journal. The dozens of leading researchers and policymakers outlined the case for establishing a World Antimalarial Resistance Network (WARN). The network launches a coordinated global effort to tackle the parasitic disease, which threatens half the world’s population and kills an estimated 1 to 2.7 million people every year.

Dr. Kyle chaired the subcommittee on in vitro antimalarial drug susceptibility and was senior author of the Malaria Journal paper describing that aspect of the WARN system.

One of the major aims of WARN is to facilitate worldwide monitoring and characterization of drug resistance, particularly any resistance to the newest generation of antimalarial drugs called artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). ACTs help reduce the chances that a mutation will disarm artemisinin by combining derivatives of that drug with other compounds in a potent multidrug cocktail.

“ACTs are the best remaining treatment almost everywhere, but there are already hints that resistance to artemisinins is emerging and resistance has compromised the effectiveness of some ACT partner drugs ,” Dr. Kyle said. “The network will provide the most sensitive bellwether of the emergence of resistant parasites. There is no time to waste.”

WARN will consist of four linked, open-access databases containing the following information:

• Clinical drug effectiveness
• In vitro (laboratory) response of malaria parasites to drugs
• Prevalence of molecular markers of drug resistance
• Pharmacological characteristics of drugs in different groups of patients

Dr. Kyle’s USF team will be among the WARN network of laboratories establishing measures of baseline sensitivity to commonly used antimalarial drugs from key regions of the world, including Africa, Asia and South America.

The resulting database will help monitor changes in parasite resistance over time, speed detection of strains of malaria with novel drug resistance profiles, and investigate suitable alternative treatments.

The databases will include freely available tools to make adding information straightforward, and to give researchers the opportunity to analyze and use the information in a variety of ways. Information on individual patients will be collated in a standardized way, which should make it easier for researchers to compare directly or pool data from different sites across the world.

WARN’s founders hope that the databases will help speed the publication process for scientists. This, in turn, means that policymakers and malaria control managers will have access to timely information on the temporal and geographic trends of drug resistance, allowing them to take action as soon as resistant malaria parasites are detected.

Drug resistance is a major threat to the control and eradication of malaria and can lead to treatment failure, increased spread of the disease, and higher incidences of illness and death. Many older antimalarials, including chloroquine and mefloquine, are now of limited use because of drug resistance.

Today, more than 50 countries recommend ACTs as first-line therapy for falciparum malaria, the most severe form of the disease. While these newer treatments are currently effective, researchers know that resistance to ACTs will emerge in the future.

The network’s launch follows a meeting of leading malaria researchers and policymakers, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in Cambridge, UK, in late 2006.

– USF Health –

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With $310 million in research funding last year, USF is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of Florida’s top three research universities.