[Newsdesk] Research in brief

In a double-blind randomised trial, researchers in Uganda investigated whether treating cloth wraps with permethrin insect repellent every 4 weeks would protect infants from malaria compared with placebo treatment. 200 mothers with a child aged 6–18 months were randomly assigned to permethrin wraps and 200 to placebo. After 24 weeks, the incidence of clinical malaria in children in the permethrin group was significantly lower than in the placebo group, with 34 cases in the permethrin group versus 94 in the placebo group.