The Surrey Project, funded by the British Heart Foundation, will address cardiac safety in novel antimalarials

The Surrey Project, funded by the British Heart Foundation, will address cardiac safety in novel antimalarials

Understanding how drugs used to treat malaria affect the human heart is important to definitively combating one of the world's most common but serious infections, according to researchers at the University of Surrey.

The three-year study was funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

Professor Kamalan Jeevaratnam, project leader at the University of Surrey's Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, said:

“Malaria remains one of the most devastating and widespread infections in the world – an infection that disproportionately affects people from the most disadvantaged countries.

Our previous work suggests that drugs used to treat malaria (alone or in combination) increase the risk of cardiac arrhythmias through multiple mechanisms, including altering calcium functions in the cell, regulating genes, and the functioning of special channels that conduct ions. But we need to look deeper into this issue and determine whether these side effects can be addressed.”

Kamalan Jeevaratnam, Professor and Project Leader, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Surrey

Malaria is a serious infection transmitted by female mosquitoes and can be potentially fatal if not treated quickly. People who get malaria are typically very sick with high fever, chills and flu-like symptoms.

Dr. Tian Yu, research advisor at the British Heart Foundation, said:

"At the moment we do not have a complete picture of the association between antimalarial drugs and cardiac arrhythmias. This is because arrhythmias are currently screened by the QT interval (an electrical recording of the heart), which does not assess all aspects of arrhythmic risk.

"Currently, we only understand how individual anti-malarial drugs can cause cardiac arrhythmias through changes in the QT interval. This does not reflect the fact that anti-malarial drugs can cause other cardiac changes that can lead to arrhythmias, and people can take a combination of treatments. By looking at other risk indicators and how these drugs are used by people in “When used in the real world, it will provide us with valuable insights that could help make the use of these drugs safer.”

Surrey's project will address cardiac safety in novel antimalarials, the development of which is central to the global challenge to control and ultimately eradicate malaria. The study will be crucial in developing new, precise and reliable cardiac safety principles and in assessing the underlying risk of arrhythmias. The results of the study will not only be relevant for antimalarial drugs, but could also be applied to the repurposing and development of drugs for other diseases in the future.

Professor Paul Townsend, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Surrey, said:

“This project is a clear example of our One Health, One Medicine ethos at the University of Surrey – a belief that human, animal and environmental health are inextricably linked. This is the holistic worldview needed to tackle major challenges like malaria.

“We are confident that the results of Professor Jeevaratnam’s work could provide a scientific basis for safer and more targeted clinical trials for drugs to treat malaria and provide an evidence base for changes in WHO prescribing policy.”

This project is a collaboration between the University of Surrey, the Mahidol-Oxford Research Unit and Imperial College London.

Source:

University of Surrey

.