A malaria drug treatment could save babies’ lives regardless whether pregnant mother contracted malaria or not

Good news! What a surprise!

"... To try to reduce the risk of malarial infection, the World Health Organization recommends that pregnant women in low-income countries be treated with a combination of the antimalarial drugs sulfadoxine and pyrimethamine (SP). Curiously, a recent study found that this treatment also seemed to increase the birth weight of treated mothers’ babies, regardless of whether they contracted malaria. ..."

A malaria drug treatment could save babies’ lives Human organ chip research shows that a common antimalarial combination could reverse the negative effects of malnutrition in the female digestive tract that lead to low birth weight infants

Intermittent preventive therapy for malaria during pregnancy using 2 vs 3 or more doses of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and risk of low birth weight in Africa: systematic review and meta-analysis (open access)

The Intestine Chip was created by taking healthy intestinal cells donated by female patients and culturing them inside a human Organ Chip device. This process allowed the team to create the first in vitro model of the adult female intestine and replicate the hallmarks of malnutrition to find treatments.