SynthesisMalaria journal2017
Anti-malarial medicine quality field studies and surveys: a systematic review of screening technologies used and reporting of findings.
Synthesis in Malaria journal, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing the quality of antimalarial drugs in Equatorial Guinea: a follow-up study.BMJ global health · 2025Article
- Quality assessment of oral antimalarial and antiretroviral medicines used by public health systems in Sahel countries.PloS one · 2024Article
- Prevalence of substandard, falsified, unlicensed and unregistered medicine and its associated factors in Africa: a systematic review.Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2024Review
- An open-source smartphone app for the quantitative evaluation of thin-layer chromatographic analyses in medicine quality screening.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Clarification of the internal structure and factors of poor dissolution of substandard roxithromycin tablets by near-infrared chemical imaging.International journal of pharmaceutics · 2021Article
- Usefulness of combined screening methods for rapid detection of falsified and/or substandard medicines in the absence of a confirmatory method.Malaria journal · 2019Article
- A Cross-Sectional Investigation of the Quality of Selected Medicines for Noncommunicable Diseases in Private Community Drug Outlets in Cambodia during 2011-2013.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2019Article
- Are we doing enough to prevent poor-quality antimalarial medicines in the developing world?BMC public health · 2018Article
- Prevalence of substandard and falsified artemisinin-based combination antimalarial medicines on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea.BMJ global health · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAssessing the quality of medicines in low-middle income countries (LMICs) relies primarily on human inspection and screening technologies, where available. Field studies and surveys have frequently utilized screening tests to analyse medicines sampled at the point of care, such as health care facilities and medicine outlets, to provide a snap shot of medicine quality in a specific geographical area. This review presents an overview of the screening tests typically employed in surveys to assess anti-malarial medicine quality, summarizes the analytical methods used, how findings have been reported and proposes a reporting template for future studies.
methodsA systematic search of the peer-reviewed and grey literature available in the public domain (including national and multi-national medicine quality surveys) covering the period 1990-2016 was undertaken. Studies were included if they had used screening techniques to assess the quality of anti-malarial medicines. As no standardized set of guidelines for the methodology and reporting of medicine quality surveys exist, the included studies were assessed for their standard against a newly proposed list of criteria.
resultsThe titles and abstracts of 4621 records were screened and only 39 were found to meet the eligibility criteria. These 39 studies utilized visual inspection, disintegration, colorimetry and Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) either as components of the Global Pharma Health Fund (GPHF) MiniLab
conclusionsThere is considerable heterogeneity in study design and inconsistency in reporting of field surveys of medicine quality. A lack of standardization in the design and reporting of studies of medicine quality increases the risk of bias and error, impacting on the generalizability and reliability of study results. The criteria proposed for reporting on the standard of studies in this review can be used in conjunction with existing medicine quality survey guidelines as a checklist for designing and reporting findings of studies. The review protocol has been registered with PROSPERO (CRD42015026782).
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.