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Review
. 2024 Feb 12:14:1347486.
doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2024.1347486. eCollection 2024.

Exploring adjunctive therapies for cerebral malaria

Johanna Bensalel  1   2 , Julio Gallego-Delgado  1   2   3
Affiliations
Review

Exploring adjunctive therapies for cerebral malaria

Johanna Bensalel et al. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. .

Abstract

Cerebral malaria (CM) is one of the most severe complications of malaria infection characterized by coma and neurological effects. Despite standardized treatment of malaria infection with artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT), the mortality rate is still high, and it primarily affects pediatric patients. ACT reduces parasitemia but fails to adequately target the pathogenic mechanisms underlying CM, including blood-brain-barrier (BBB) disruption, endothelial activation/dysfunction, and hyperinflammation. The need for adjunctive therapies to specifically treat this form of severe malaria is critical as hundreds of thousands of people continue to die each year from this disease. Here we present a summary of some potential promising therapeutic targets and treatments for CM, as well as some that have been tested and deemed ineffective or, in some cases, even deleterious. Further exploration into these therapeutic agents is warranted to assess the effectiveness of these potential treatments for CM patients.

Keywords: adjunctive therapy; cerebral malaria; child mortality; endothelium; severe malaria.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Visualization of major causes of child mortality across the globe. This figure illustrates that malaria is one of the top five causes of mortality in children under five years of age globally. The data shown is from 1990-2019. Obtained from Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). GBD Compare. Seattle, WA: IHME, University of Washington, 2015. Available from http://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare. (Accessed January 2, 2023).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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