A groundbreaking safety study published in The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific demonstrates that point-of-care glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) testing successfully enables safe, curative primaquine treatment for Plasmodium vivax malaria in resource-limited settings. Conducted across Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, the research confirms that rapid bedside screening is not only feasible in routine clinical workflows but also guides risk-stratified dosing with acceptable safety profiles across patient populations.
Primaquine has long been the gold standard for radical cure of vivax malaria, yet its potential to cause severe hemolysis in G6PD-deficient individuals has limited its use in endemic regions where diagnostic capacity is constrained. This study validates that point-of-care testing removes this critical barrier, enabling clinicians to confidently prescribe high-dose, short-course regimens to G6PD-normal and heterozygous patients while identifying those requiring alternative strategies. Researchers now advocate for scaled implementation studies to translate these safety findings into population-level malaria elimination efforts across endemic countries.
Read the full article on GMJ Newsroom.
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