A theoretical mathematical assessment of the effectiveness of coartemether in the treatment of Plasmodium falciparum malaria infection

• A mathematical model was used to study the immune response and treatment of malaria infection.
• Sensitivities of different combined malaria therapies were compared to coartemether.
• Model analysis shows that coartem compares well with other combination therapies.
• There is inadequacy in the use of the model to compare combinations therapies of drugs with the same mode of action.

This study analysed the dynamics of blood stage malaria with immune response and under administration of Coartem as a combination therapy. The techniques of mathematical modelling were used in coming up and analysing the deterministic model. Sensitivity analysis and statistical approaches were used to compare model simulated treatment results with the use of Coartem and other antimalarial drugs. We sought to theoretically assess if Coartem can bring improvement in the treatment of malaria as compared to the other drugs. Our analysis and numerical results suggest that Coartem compares well with other antimalarial drug that have been on the market. However, the shortfall of our model is that it could not give good comparative results between Coartem treatment and other combination treatment schemes with similar mode of action. Our study predicted effects of different drug treatment protocols in malaria using a theoretical mathematical model, which gives an insight into potential effective treatment schemes.