Prevention of Malaria

With the increased spread of chloroquine-resistant Plasmodium falciparum malaria and mounting evidence of lack of efficacy and toxicity of alternative drugs, it has become extremely difficult to propose simple, widely applicable and uniformly acceptable recommendations for malaria chemoprophylaxis. With regard to specific drugs, it is clear that because of its toxicity amodiaquine should no longer be used for chemoprophylaxis, and that pyrimethamine/sulfadoxine should, for the most part, be used only as a presumptive therapy. The pyrimethamine/dapsone combination is promising, but data on its efficacy are limited. Although proguanil (chloroguanide) is recommended by several sources because of its safety, disturbing reports of chemoprophylaxis failure in Africa and a well-documented lack of efficacy in South East Asia would suggest that its usefulness may be limited. However, a recent study has documented the efficacy of a proguanil-sulphonamide combination in Thailand, an area of high grade chloroquine resistance. Although long term studies of drug safety are not yet available, doxycycline and mefloquine appear to be the drugs of choice in areas where P. falciparum shows multidrug resistance. Regardless of the drug regimen recommended for chemoprophylaxis, travellers must be informed that no present-day antimalarial agent guarantees protection against malaria.