Intravenous Artesunate for the Treatment of Severe and Complicated Malaria in the United States: Clinical Use Under an Investigational New Drug Protocol.

BACKGROUND: Quinidine gluconate, the only U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment for life-threatening malaria in the United States, has a problematic safety profile and is often unavailable in hospitals. OBJECTIVE: To assess the safety and clinical benefit of intravenous artesunate as an alternative to quinidine. DESIGN: Retrospective case series. SETTING: U.S. hospitals. PATIENTS: 102 patients aged 1 to 72 years (90% adults; 61% men) with severe and complicated malaria. Patients received 4 weight-based doses of intravenous artesunate (2.4 mg/kg) under a treatment protocol implemented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between January 2007 and December 2010. At baseline, 35% had evidence of cerebral malaria, and 17% had severe hepatic impairment. Eligibility required the presence of microscopically confirmed malaria, need for intravenous treatment, and an impediment to quinidine. MEASUREMENTS: Clinical and laboratory data from each patient's hospital records were abstracted retrospectively, including information from baseline through a maximum 7-day follow-up, and presented before a physician committee to evaluate safety and clinical benefit outcomes. RESULTS: 7 patients died (mortality rate, 6.9%). The most frequent adverse events were anemia (65%) and elevated hepatic enzyme levels (49%). All deaths and most adverse events were attributed to the severity of malaria. Patients' symptoms generally improved or resolved within 3 days, and the median time to discharge from the intensive care unit was 4 days, even for patients with severe liver disease or cerebral malaria. More than 100 concomitant medications were used, with no documented drug-drug interactions. LIMITATION: Potential late-presenting safety issues might occur outside the 7-day follow-up. CONCLUSION: Artesunate was a safe and clinically beneficial alternative to quinidine.

Regulatory approvals in a large multinational clinical trial: the ESPRIT experience.

While accepted as serving an important function to safeguard human subjects, the process of obtaining regulatory approvals to conduct clinical trials is generally regarded as cumbersome and time-consuming. For large multinational trials, U.S. federally sponsored human subject research abroad involves specific U.S. regulatory requirements, in addition to those of the host country, that act as further hurdles. These requirements may include obtaining an Assurance of Protection for Human Subjects from the Office of Human Research Protection of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, maintaining specific Ethics Committee/Institutional Review Board (EC/IRB) composition, and incorporating mandated elements in informed consents, all of which may differ from local policies and guidelines. Specific examples of issues that led to delays in regulatory approvals for sites participating in the multinational clinical trial entitled Evaluation of Subcutaneous Proleukin in a Randomized International Trial (ESPRIT) are presented here. While the goal of these requirements is to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects, they may create substantial delays and engender resentment over the notion of lack of respect for individual country sovereignty. Substudies within ESPRIT have been undertaken to obtain feedback from EC/IRB chairpersons, site personnel responsible for processing the required assurances, ESPRIT investigators, and study participants regarding aspects of current U.S. regulatory requirements related to human subject protection and ethical issues in multinational research. The purpose of these substudies is to compare the attitudes and experiences across countries regarding important ethical issues associated with conducting ESPRIT. One objective of the substudies is to gather additional insight to the impact of U.S. regulatory processes. Another is to help to inform the debate about how to best maximize the rights and welfare of clinical trial participants without delaying the initiation of research, while respecting the importance of national sensitivities.