Primaquine was given to 110 Japanese malaria patients 132 times for the eradication of
P. falciparum gametocytes or for the treatment of relapsing malarias.
1) Primaquine was tolerated well by the patients despite minor gastrointestinal discomforts. No hemolytic anemia developed reflecting the extreme rarity of G-6-PD deficiency among the Japanese.
2) The exact failure rate of radical treatment of vivax malaria was not obtained as many patients returned to malaria endemic areas to continue their work. There were two patients each from PapuaNew Guinea and Kalimantan and one case from India who relapsed after one course of therapy. Two patients from Kalimantan and one patient from Papua-New Guinea were radically cured by the second course of primaquine treatment. Another case from Papua-New Guinea was reinfected in the same area and another case from India is free from malaria for 6 months after the second primaquine treatment.
Three patients relapsed after two successive courses of primaquine treatment at an interval of two to three months and were radically cured by 30 mg of primaquine given over seven days.
3) All the six ovale malaria patients were radically cured by one course of primaquine treatment.
4)
P. falciparum gametocytes were sensitive to primaquine irrespective of the chloroquine-resistance of the asexual form of the parasites. There was indication that the response to primaquine in the second treatment was a little slower than in the first treatment.
The gametocytes in the untreated with primaquine patients, after they reached a peak level, decreased logarithmically and their trend was expressed as log
y=
-ax+b, where
x is the day after treatment with schizontocidal drug,
y the parasite count per μ
l of blood, and
a and
b constants. The equations in two patients were as follows. log
y= -0.1366
x + 4.3870 and log
y= -0.0869
x+ 3.6497.
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