Revisiting the Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Artemether-Lumefantrine Combination in the Treatment of Uncomplicated Malaria in Elele, a Malaria Endemic Area in Rivers State Nigeria

• 作者: F. N. Oguwike L. C. Chukwu P. C. Unekwe P. U. Agbasi
• 来源期刊: 生物科学与医学(英文)
• 学科: 医学
• 关键词: UNCOMPLICATED MALARIA Fever Effectiveness ARTEMISININ Based COMBINATION Elele
• 年，卷（期）: 2019,（6）
• 页码范围: 59-72
• 页数: 14页
• 分类号: R73

摘要

Background: The World Health Organization adopted Artenisinin based combination therapy (ACT) for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in endemic regions. The efficacy of ACT in malaria treatment must have prompted this choice. There’s need to protect the ACT from plasmodial resistance. Hence, clinical scaling up of ACT program is needed. This entails continued assessment, monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of component drugs in endemic areas. Purpose: This study revisited the evaluation of the effectiveness of artemether-lumefantrine combination (ALC) in the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in Elele, Nigeria. Method: The study was conducted in Elele, a malaria endemic area in Rivers State, Nigeria. This was a facility based descriptive, cross sectional study at Madonna University Teaching Hospital (MUTH) Elele using simple sampling technique. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected. 100 patients who consented to the study were recruited in the outpatient clinic using semi structured questionnaires as part of study instrument. Inclusion criteria were having a body temperature of ≥37.5&deg;C, symptoms of malaria, positive parasitemia, non ingestion of antimalarial in the past 2 weeks, etc. MUTH ethics committee gave ethical clearance. Patient recruitment following consent commenced with their symptoms and signs recorded at presentation while disappearance of the same was determined following drug ingestion on days 2/4/6/8/10 and 14. The data gotten was analyzed by tallying the responses to get the frequencies using SPSS 16.0 version and Microsoft excel tools. The student t-test was used to calculate the P-value, values < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Most of the patients knew mosquitoes as the mode of malaria transmission (70%). The ACT is known and used by these patients: artesunate/amodiaquine: 41 (41%);artesunate/lumefantrine: 40 (40%);artesunate/sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine: 38(38%);artesunate/mefloquine: 20 (20%). Fever was the predominant presenting sympto