Therapeutic Efficacy of sulfadoxin/pyrimethamine in the Treatment of Uncomplicated Plasmodium Falciparum Malaria in Enseno, Meskan Woreda, Gurage Zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia

Workeabeba Abebe

Ethiop Med J. 2006 Apr;44(2):133-8.

PMID: 17447375

Abstract:

Objectives:




To study the the response of Plasmodium falciparum to sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP).













Patients and methods:




A cross sectional survey was conducted between October and November 2002 to study the response of P. falciparum to the standard regimen of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP)--25 mg/kg of sulfadoxine and 1.25 mg/kg of pyrimethamin--in 70 patients (35 males, 35 females) who were seen Enseno malaria center. Gurage Zone, Sothern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region (SNNPR), Ethiopia. The clinical and parasitological responses were studied until day-14 in accordance with the modified 1999 WHO in-vivo protocol for the evaluation of therapeutic efficacy of anti-malarial drugs.













Results:




Of 75 enrolled patients, 5 were lost to follow-up or excluded before day-14. A total of 70 patients were followed till the end of the study, among which 10 (14.3%) had treatment failure. This was noted more in children than in adults and this differenrce was statistically significant (OR = 0.14; 95% CI = 1.00, 0.025; P < 0.05 Fisher's exact test). Clinical presentation with high-grade fever on day-0 was found to be more predictive for treatment failure (P = 0.0005, Fisher's exact test).













Conclusion:




The treatment failure of SP in this study lies between 6-15% (14.3%), which is called an Alert period, using an arbitrary cut off point for treatment failure. So, it should be supplemented with large-scale sensitivity studies to initiate the mechanism for the process of change and assessment of possible alternatives.

Chemicals Related in the Paper:

Catalog Number	Product Name	Structure	CAS Number	Price
AP2447576	Sulfadoxin		2447-57-6	Price