Journal article

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

NM Douglas, JR Poespoprodjo, D Patriani, MJ Malloy, E Kenangalem, P Sugiarto, JA Simpson, Y Soenarto, NM Anstey, RN Price

Plos Medicine | PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE | Published : 2017

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 dihydroart..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Wellcome Trust


Funding Acknowledgements

The study was funded by the Wellcome Trust (Senior Fellowship in Clinical Science to RNP, 200909) and the NHMRC (program grant awarded to RNP and NMA, GNT1037304). NMD was funded by the Rhodes Trust and JRP by a Wellcome Trust Training fellowship in Tropical Medicine (099875). NMA is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Practitioner Fellowship (1042072), and JAS is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellowship (1104975). The Timika Research Facility and Papuan Community Health Foundation are supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.