Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
3420849 | Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene | 2007 | 6 Pages |
Abstract
The standard adult treatment regimen for Plasmodium vivax malaria is chloroquine (1500Â mg over 3 d) plus primaquine (15 or 30Â mg daily for 14 d), but patient compliance tends to be poor with the lengthy course. Preliminary observations are reported on the efficacy of a shorter treatment course - artesunate (200Â mg twice a day for 2 d) plus primaquine (22.5Â mg base twice a day for 7 d) - given to 28 adult patients infected with P. vivax in Viet Nam. All patients responded quickly to treatment with mean (SD) parasite and fever clearance times of 14.2 (4.0) and 18.6 (8.4) h, respectively. The high dose of primaquine was generally well tolerated, and only one patient (3.6%) had a recurrence of parasitaemia during 28 d of follow-up. As most patients infected with Southeast Asian strains of P. vivax have their first relapse within 28 d after treatment with rapidly eliminated blood schizonticides, the absence of parasitaemia in the remaining 27 patients suggests that this drug regimen was active against both blood and liver stages. Further studies are needed to confirm that this rapidly acting, short artesunate-primaquine regimen can result in better patient compliance and treatment outcomes than the chloroquine-primaquine regimen.
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Authors
Nguyen Van Hoang Dao, Bui Tri Cuong, Nguyen Dang Ngoa, Le Thi Thanh Thuy, Nguyen Duy The, Dinh Ngoc Duy, Bui Dai, Nguyen Xuan Thanh, Marina Chavchich, Karl H. Rieckmann, Michael D. Edstein,