Effectiveness of quinine in the treatment of malaria

Abstract

Introduction:

Malaria is an acute fibril disease, sometimes lethal, caused by parasites that are transmitted to the human being by mosquitos of the genre Anopheles. Of the 229 million cases of malaria registered in 2019, most of them were originated in children younger than five years old in sub-Saharan Africa. Mortality is given by the presence of complications which should be early identified and treated.

Objective:

To determine the response to the treatment with combinations of quinine and the possible factors which can influence.

Methods:

A descriptive study was carried out with 59 adult patients with malaria by Plasmodium falciparum admitted to the Department                                                                                             of Medicine at Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine, during the period from January, 2015 to December, 2018. The information was taken from the patients ‘charts and processed in a data base in Microsoft Excel, later they were analyzed in the Programme \IBM\SPSS\Statistics\21.

Results:

Male patients prevailed with a mean of 37.9 years old. The response to treatment was adequate with schemes combined and used with quinine. The 20.3 % of patients had a delayed response and it was related to a severe and atypical clinical picture, hyperparasitemia, it delays on admission, it has presence of presence de anemia and the use associate to clindamycin.

Conclusions:

Combinations bases on  quinine were effective for the treatment of  malaria by Plasmodium falciparum, although the  efficiency of the  treatment can be influenced by other factors.