Travel medicine and infectious disease
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Travel Med Infect Dis · May 2015
Optimal primaquine use for radical cure of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium ovale malaria in Japanese travelers--A retrospective analysis.
Recently, a dose of 30 mg (base) primaquine daily for 14 days is increasingly recommended for radical cure of Plasmodium vivax malaria. However, total primaquine doses, or those per body weight, are also recognized as important. In Japan, primaquine is not a licensed medicine, but has been used through the Research Group on Chemotherapy of Tropical Diseases for >3 decades. ⋯ In order to optimize radical cure of P. vivax, the total primaquine dose per body weight should be considered, at least 3.5 mg/kg or even more if contracted in countries with significant drug resistance. Possibility of primaquine hepatotoxicity in chronic liver disease patients remains to be elucidated.