Resistance to Chloroquine Unhinges Vivax Malaria Therapeutics

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Abstract
After 6 decades during which it was almost completely neglected, malaria workers have begun to acknowledge that vivax malaria poses a serious threat to human health. Nearly 3 billion people live at risk of the infection, and 100 to 400 million suffer clinical attacks each year (21, 23). Recent studies challenge the notion of Plasmodium vivax as a benign infection. A spectrum of severe disease syndromes historically considered the reserve of Plasmodium falciparum have been demonstrated in vivax malaria (4, 20, 25, 28, 31). Realization of the threat posed by this parasite, along with acknowledgment of the need to eliminate all of the malarias (19), draws attention to several important problems in the chemotherapeutic management of vivax malaria.