Old malaria drug works in Malawi
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Chloroquine, a crucial malaria drug that lost its punch in most countries because of germ resistance, now appears to be highly effective again in one African nation -- a surprising shift with implications for other tough bugs.
It appears to be the first time a drug widely used against a killer disease has regained effectiveness after a break in use, University of Maryland researchers reported this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Chloroquine was tested in 105 malaria-infected children at a clinic in central Malawi, where it has not been used for 13 years. Ninety-nine percent of them were cured, far better than the results of two drugs tested on another group of children.
