Plasmodium vivax malaria elimination : should innovative ideas from the past be revisited?

• Autor(a) principal: Val, Fernando Fonseca de Almeida
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Sampaio, Vanderson de Souza, Cassera, Maria Belén, Andrade, Raquel Tapajós, Tauil, Pedro Luiz, Monteiro, Wuelton Marcelo, Lacerda, Marcus Vinícius Guimarães de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UnB
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.unb.br/handle/10482/29136; https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0074-0276140240
• topic: Malária; Plasmodium vivax; Malária - tratamento; Malária - controle; Medicamentos

In the 1950s, the strategy of adding chloroquine to food salt as a prophylaxis against malaria was considered to be a successful tool. However, with the development of Plasmodium resistance in the Brazilian Amazon, this control strategy was abandoned. More than 50 years later, asexual stage resistance can be avoided by screening for antimalarial drugs that have a selective action against gametocytes, thus old prophylactic measures can be revisited. The efficacy of the old methods should be tested as complementary tools for the elimination of malaria.