The role of the qinghaosu derivatives in the treatment of severe malaria.

Over the past years, several studies have been published comparing artemisinin (qinghaosu) derivatives with quinine in the treatment of children and adults with severe malaria. Due to a lower than expected mortality rate in the control (quinine) groups and a small difference in mortality between the artemether and quinine treated groups, none of the studies has reached statistic significance. An attempt to combine the various studies in an overview (meta-analysis) using the raw individual patient data is in process. This paper summarises the differences between artemether and quinine with respect to important outcome measurements in severe malaria using the published studies.