Hybrid antimalarials; the reaction of 8-amino-quinolines with nitrodiols

Abstract

Malaria is one of the oldest diseases known to man, and, even today, with the great advances in medical science, it affects a large percentage of the human race. It has been estimated that.the disease attacks several hundred million people every year and that it accounts for three million.fatalities in the same period of time. Approximately twenty•five per cent of the hospital admissions among United States troops stationed at Vera Cruz in the Mexican war was due to malaria and there were 1,213,685 cases among the white troops on the Union side during the Civil War. The disease prevented action by both Allied and Central Powers in the Near East in World War I, and it has been reported that the incidence of malaria in the Pacific reached 750 per thousand per annum in the early years of the Second World War. In the United States, which is in a temperate zone, an estimated one million persons are infected and it has been found in every state in the Union. A never-ending search for more potent and less toxic antimalarials has continued and will undoubtedly do so until this scourge is no longer of importance.