Open Access | Therapeutics: Intermittent preventive treatment of infants with mefloquine reduces risk of clinical malaria in areas of moderate malaria transmission and high resistance to sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine

Commentary on:
Gosling RD, Gesase S, Mosha JF, et al . Protective efficacy and safety of three antimalarial regimens for intermittent preventive treatment for malaria in infants: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Lancet 2009;374:1521–32.

Resistance to the combination sulphadoxine–pyrimethamine (SP) is increasing.1,–,3 This is the favoured compound for intermittent preventive treatment (IPT; administration of an antimalarial at prespecified intervals to prevent malaria). Gosling and colleagues report on the failure of IPT in infants (IPTi) with SP (−6.7%; 95% CI −45.9% to 22.0%) in Northern Tanzania in the same issue of a journal in which the combination is endorsed by a meta-analysis.4