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Hans-Georg Michna wrote in message news:...
> Malarone has far fewer and lighter side effects than Lariam.
> However, there's no guarantee that you aren't one of the few
> that are susceptible.
I completly agree. At the moment most international health authorities
recommend three different drugs for the prophylaxis of malaria in
subsaharan Africa that should be prescribed on an individual basis:
Lariam, Malarone or doxycycline.
A recent study comparing all three drugs found that Malarone was by
average best tolerated, followed by doxycycline. Lariam's tolerance
was worse than that of Malarone or doxycycline and - to my surprise -
the rather old combination chloroquine/proguanil caused most
side-effects. Lariam apparently was the drug that caused
neuropsychiatric side-effects most often:
http://www.astmh.org/meetings/2002-book-fina.rtf
(study abstract no. 568)
In this study neither the travellers nor the prescribing doctors knew
who was taking which medication.
However, this does not mean any of the medications is free of
side-effects. All drugs have to be prescribed individually and even if
all medical history is considered there's no guarantee that a patient
might not be unlucky and still experience a side-effect. For example,
Malarone was recently associated with a case of Stevens-Johnson
syndrome, a serious skin disease:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CID/journal/issues/v37n1/30442/30442.web.pdf
However, all risks of side-effects should be weighed against the risk
of malaria: a potentially fatal disease. And of course most of
subsaharan Africa is a high-risk zone for malaria.
Christian |
