What is the best anti-malaria preventive drug?

Answer 1

Malarone is ok, but be careful with any of these drugs. They actually do more damage to your organs than actually contracting it and treating it on a timely basis. They also only provide 80% protection or so, and if you do get malaria anyway it is more difficult to detect if you are taking the drug.

Also you should only listen to doctors who have had experience working with Malaria (ie: in a country where it is prevalent), they will know best.

Answer 2

Stay away from Larium. It can cause severe hallucinations and nightmares. It can also accentuate a phobia, such as claustrophobia. I had terrible problems with this drug and it took years to get over it. I have no problem with Malarone. .

Answer 3

There are several families of drugs used to treat malaria. Chloroquine was the antimalarial drug of choice for many years in most parts of the world. However, resistance of Plasmodium falciparum to chloroquine has spread recently from Asia to Africa, making the drug ineffective against the most dangerous Plasmodium strain in many affected regions of the world.

There are several other substances which are used for treatment and, partially, for prevention (prophylaxis). Many drugs can be used for both purposes; larger doses are used to treat cases of malaria. Their deployment depends mainly on the frequency of resistant parasites in the area where the drug is used.

Currently available anti-malarial drugs include:

Artemether-lumefantrine (Therapy only, commercial name Coartem)
Artesunate-amodiaquine (Therapy only)
Artesunate-mefloquine (Therapy only)
Artesunate-Sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine (Therapy only)
Atovaquone-proguanil, trade name Malarone (Therapy and prophylaxis)
Quinine (Therapy only)
Chloroquine (Therapy and prophylaxis; usefulness now reduced due to resistance)
Cotrifazid (Therapy and prophylaxis)
Doxycycline (Therapy and prophylaxis)
Mefloquine, trade name Lariam (Therapy and prophylaxis)
Primaquine (Therapy in P. vivax and P. ovale only; not for prophylaxis)
Proguanil (Prophylaxis only)
Sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (Therapy; prophylaxis for semi-immune pregnant women in endemic countries as "Intermittent Preventive Treatment" - IPT)
Methods used to prevent the spread of disease, or to protect individuals in areas where malaria is endemic, include prophylactic drugs, mosquito eradication, and the prevention of mosquito bites. There is currently no vaccine that will prevent malaria, but this is an active field of research.

Many researchers argue that prevention of malaria may be more cost-effective than treatment of the disease in the long run, but the capital costs required are out of reach of many of the world's poorest people. Economic adviser Jeffrey Sachs estimates that malaria can be controlled for US$3 billion in aid per year. It has been argued that, in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals, money should be redirected from HIV/AIDS treatment to malaria prevention, which for the same amount of money would provide greater benefit to African economies.

Efforts to eradicate malaria by eliminating mosquitoes have been successful in some areas. Malaria was once common in the United States and southern Europe, but the draining of wetland breeding grounds and better sanitation, in conjunction with the monitoring and treatment of infected humans, eliminated it from affluent regions. In 2002, there were 1,059 cases of malaria reported in the US, including eight deaths. In five of those cases, the disease was contracted in the United States. Malaria was eliminated from the northern parts of the USA in the early twentieth century, and the use of the pesticide DDT eliminated it from the South by 1951. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a major public health effort to eradicate malaria worldwide by selectively targeting mosquitoes in areas where malaria was rampant. However, these efforts have so far failed to eradicate malaria in many parts of the developing world - the problem is most prevalent in Africa.

Brazil, Eritrea, India, and Vietnam have, unlike many other developing nations, successfully reduced the malaria burden. Common success factors included conducive country conditions, a targeted technical approach using a package of effective tools, data-driven decision-making, active leadership at all levels of government, involvement of communities, decentralized implementation and control of finances, skilled technical and managerial capacity at national and sub-national levels, hands-on technical and programmatic support from partner agencies, and sufficient and flexible financing

Several drugs, most of which are also used for treatment of malaria, can be taken preventively. Generally, these drugs are taken daily or weekly, at a lower dose than would be used for treatment of a person who had actually contracted the disease. Use of prophylactic drugs is seldom practical for full-time residents of malaria-endemic areas, and their use is usually restricted to short-term visitors and travelers to malarial regions. This is due to the potentially high cost of purchasing the drugs, because long-term use of some drugs may have negative side effects, and because some effective anti-malarial drugs are difficult to obtain outside of wealthy nations.

Quinine was used starting in the seventeenth century as a prophylactic against malaria. The development of more effective alternatives such as quinacrine, chloroquine, and primaquine in the twentieth century reduced the reliance on quinine. Today, quinine is still used to treat chloroquine resistant Plasmodium falciparum, as well as severe and cerebral stages of malaria, but is not generally for malaria prophylaxis.

Modern drugs used preventively include mefloquine (Lariam®), doxycycline (available generically), and atovaquone proguanil hydrochloride (Malarone®). The choice of which drug to use is usually driven by what drugs the parasites in the area are resistant to, as well as side-effects and other considerations. The prophylactic effect does not begin immediately upon starting taking the drugs, so people temporarily visiting malaria-endemic areas usually begin taking the drugs one to two weeks before arriving and must continue taking them for 4 weeks after leaving (atovaquone proguanil only needs be started 2 days prior and continued for 7 days afterwards).