This efficacy study has shown that DHA–PPQ is effective in the treatment of uncomplicated falciparum malaria in an area of unstable transmission in Sudan. The single late parasitological failure on day 35 proved to be a recrudescence after verification by nPCR. The response to the treatment was dramatic and all slides were negative from day 1 and continued to be so to the end of follow-up. There were no complaints of adverse complications due to the treatment. There were no severe adverse events recorded during the follow up. As this is the first time the drug has been tried in Sudan there are no previous reports for comparison.
Other research in neighbouring countries has shown similar effectiveness [
19,
20]. In Kenya, a study of efficacy of AL and DHA–PPQ in children under 5 years of age showed that DHA–PPQ is an effective and tolerable treatment for uncomplicated malaria. DHA–PQQ was adopted as a second-line treatment in Kenya in 2009 [
19]. Equally, research in west, south and central Africa has shown similar results [
20‐
22]. Dihydroartemisinin has been identified as a potent derivative of the parent drug artemether [
4]. Its partner drug, piperaquine, has only been used as monotherapy for treatment of malaria in the 1970s in China and has never been used in Sudan or any other African country [
12,
23]. However, the combination DHA–PPQ has only been used in Sudan lately in research and is being used in other African countries. This will make DHA–PPQ an ideal ACT for malaria in Sudan.
On the other hand, AS/SP has lost its effectiveness against falciparum malaria in Blue Nile region. Besides the single case ETF, 20% of the patients showed late parasitological failure and four patients had gametocytes on days 21 and 28 of the follow-up (Table
2). The corrected PCR results have shown that the failure rate was more than 14%, which is alarmingly high. This finding indicates that AS/SP has lost its position as an effective treatment for falciparum malaria in the Blue Nile region, similar to other reports from Kassala (15%) and Gedaref (14%) [
13]. In fact, patients and medical personnel have started to lose confidence in this combination, and are using instead quinine and injectable artemether. The partner drug, SP was used before 2005 as a second-line treatment for falciparum malaria in Sudan [
24]. It has been known to exhibit resistance before adoption of ACT in 2004 [
8,
9,
24]. SP is also used alone as prophylaxis in pregnancy. AS/SP itself is not a fixed combination as it co-exists in separate compartments in the blister seal. All these factors led to an increase of resistance of the parasite to SP, which is responsible for ECF and LPF, especially LPF, as SP is responsible for long-term clearance of parasites [
4,
11]. There were also remaining gametocytes in the late stages of follow-up in this study. Artesunate is known to have gametocidal effect [
11]. However, those subjects with gametocytes remain infective to
Anopheles mosquitoes and thus raise a question of potency of artesunate as a gametocidal therapy. The success of malaria control in Sudan largely depends on the use of AS/SP and AL in the treatment of cases beside other control measures. Failure of any of the control measures, especially treatment, will jeopardize that success. The health authority has acknowledged the failure of AS/SP and the need for change with DHA–PPQ.