Treatment of acute vivax malaria with tafenoquine

Tafenoquine is an 8-aminoquiniline related to primaquine with preclinical activity against a range of malaria species. We treated two acute cases of vivax malaria with tafenoquine (800 mg over three days) atone, instead of conventional chloroquine (1500 mg over three days) and primaquine (420 mg over 14 days). In addition to the convenience of this regimen, the rapid parasite clearances observed, coupled with a good clinical response and lack of recrudescence or relapse, indicate that further investigation of tafenoquine in the treatment of vivax malaria is warranted. (C) 2004 Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Adequate primaquine for vivax malaria

Background. Treatment of vivax malaria with primaquine prevents the relapse of infection from residual liver stages of the parasite. Inadequate dosage is related to a higher relapse risk. Methods: A comparison was made of vivax malaria relapse-prevention treatments with primaquine 22.5 mg or 30 mg daily for 14 days on 146 reports to the Australian Army Central Malaria Register. Results: The lower dose of primaquine was found to carry a relative risk of 6.63 for a relapse of vivax malaria compared with the higher dose. Conclusions:The available data presented here suggest that vivax malaria in this region is increasingly tolerant of the 22.5 mg daily treatment regimen of primaquine and that the greater dose of at least 30 mg daily is more effective.