After 300 years, quinine could be abandoned as a treatment for malaria, experts have said.
The herb-based treatment artesunate, developed in Asia, has proved more effective in treating children in a major study in Africa, according to a report in The Lancet.
The Asian treatment reduced deaths by more than a fifth, in the study involving more than 5,000 treatment with severe disease.
In the study some 10.9 per cent of children died following treatment with quinine. This fell to 8.5 per cent among those treated with artesunate.
Researchers said the newer drug was also very safe and easy to administer, with few side-effects.
Artesunate comes from the Chinese herb qinghao.
Quinine was derived from the bark of a tree in South America.
Researcher Professor Nick White of the Wellcome Trust-Mahidol University-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Programme, Bangkok, Thailand, said: "For over a century, quinine administered by injection has been the best treatment available for treating severe malaria, but thanks to the development of the artemisinin compounds, we now have a safer and much more effective treatment.
"We recommend that artesunate should now replace quinine for the treatment of severe malaria in both children and adults everywhere in the world."
Dr Olugbenga Mokuolu from the University of Ilorin in Nigeria, said: "If half of the estimated eight million children annually who suffer from the disease could be treated with injectable artesunate, we could potentially save 100,000 young lives each year.
"For those of us who treat malaria in Africa, this trial is a turning point. Finally we have a better treatment to offer to our malaria patients."
The Lancet November 6 2010
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