Artesunate amodiaquine

We assigned eligible participants to repeated therapy with either pyronaridine–artesunate (Shin Poong Pharmaceutical, Ansan, South Korea) or dihydroartemisinin–piperaquine (Alfasigma SpA, Pomezia, [RM], Italy) versus either artemether–lumefantrine (Novartis Pharma AG, Basel, Switzerland) or artesunate–amodiaquine (Sanofi, Paris, France), depending on study centre. There was no direct comparison between pyronaridine–artesunate and dihydroartemisinin–piperaquine. This was an open label study, although microscopists doing the parasitological assessments were masked to treatment allocation. A computer-generated randomisation list for each site within each country was used. To minimise the risk of investigators guessing treatment allocation, when there were two treatments to allocate the block size was randomly two or four and when there were three treatments to allocate the block size was randomly three or six. The University of Bamako data management team enclosed the randomisation code containing the study arm in sealed, opaque, sequentially numbered envelopes. The site investigator opened the envelopes in order and assigned treatment accordingly. Because recruitment criteria for age and bodyweight differed between treatments, a separate randomisation list was generated for each experimental drug.