Unsupervised primaquine for the treatment of Plasmodium vivax malaria relapses in southern Papua: A hospital-based cohort study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Primaquine is the only licensed drug for eradicating Plasmodium vivax hypnozoites and, therefore, preventing relapses of vivax malaria. It is a vital component of global malaria elimination efforts. Primaquine is efficacious when supervised in clinical trials, but its effectiveness in real-world settings is unknown. We aimed to determine whether unsupervised primaquine was effective for preventing re-presentation to hospital with vivax malaria in southern Papua, Indonesia.

Methods and findings

Routinely-collected hospital surveillance data were used to undertake a pragmatic comparison of the risk of re-presentation to hospital with vivax malaria in patients prescribed dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DHP) combined with primaquine versus those patients prescribed DH

SUBMITTER: Douglas NM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5574534 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature