Ten years of chloroquine efficacy for uncomplicated Plasmodium vivax malaria treatment, Turbo, Antioquia, 2002 and 2011

Abstract

Introduction: The therapeutic efficacy of antimalarial drugs should be monitored continuously because of the emergence of drug resistance. In Colombia, there are few studies evaluating the efficacy of chloroquine in uncomplicated malaria by Plasmodium vivax. This study evaluated the therapeutic efficacy of chloroquine at two different times, with an interval of ten years, in the same municipality.

Objective: To evaluate the therapeutic response to chloroquine for the treatment of uncomplicated P.vivax malaria in Turbo, Antioquia, in 2002, and to compare these results with those observed in 2011 in the same municipality.

Materials and methods: Two studies included 152 volunteers (50 in 2002 and 102 in 2011), older than 5 years old, with uncomplicated malaria according to the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria and simple infection with P. vivax. The efficacy of chloroquine, according to the current standard treatment of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) (1998) and WHO (2009), was monitored with 1,500 mg of chloroquine in 3 days and was followed clinically and parasitologically on days 0, 1, 2, 3, 7, 14 and 21 in 2002, and also on day 28 in 2011. At the end of the follow-up a dose of 0.25 mg/kg/day of primaquine was administered to each patient for 14 days.

Results: A hundred percent of the volunteers had adequate clinical and parasitological response inboth studies.

Conclusions: Chloroquine continues to be highly effective for the treatment of uncomplicated P. vivax malaria in Turbo, Antioquia, Colombia.

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7705/biomedica.v33i3.1631