Highlights of the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH)

Author(s):  Pr David Hamer

The Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) was held outside of the United States for the first time since its inception. The meeting, held in Toronto, Canada, included 3,879 total attendees (with 3,465 attending in person and 1,102 first-time attendees). There were 105 countries represented, with four African countries in the top ten (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda). 

There were many excellent plenary sessions, symposia, oral abstracts, and posters presented at the meeting. The meeting's scientific program chair and co-chair organized a symposium on recent emerging diseases that highlighted the importance of measles worldwide, chikungunya in the Indian Ocean, and recent evidence on the geographic extension of yellow fever in South America. Shortly after this symposium ended, health authorities announced that Canada had lost its measles elimination status, and consequently the entire Americas region  is also no longer considered to be measles-free.

Researchers in Gabon tested a quadruple combination of malaria drugs (sulfadoxine, pyrimethamine, artesunate, and pyronaridine) given as a single oral dose in comparison with a three-day course of artemether-lumefantrine in children with uncomplicated malaria and found similar efficacy of the two regimens. This quadruple combination has the potential to improve treatment adherence while reducing the potential for Plasmodium falciparum resistance. Another exciting trial was presented showing excellent efficacy of a novel antimalarial drug, ganaplacide/lumefantrine (trade name, GanLum, produced by Novartis) for treatment of uncomplicated malaria.

There were many other exciting presentations, including 7-year follow-up data for Qdenga, Takeda's quadrivalent dengue vaccine, showing no signs of any long-term safety signals (as opposed to the challenges previously faced by Dengvaxia). Another exciting development was the use of ivermectin in young children (5-15 kg body weight) in a multi-country study that showed that it was safe and effective for the treatment of scabies. This opens new horizons for the safe use of ivermectin for different types of parasitic infections in young children.

In summary, the ASTMH Annual Meeting once again provided a great amount of high-quality science with both important reviews of many topics, exciting new research, and an excellent opportunity for networking with international colleagues.