http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2012/05/28/richard-lehmans-journal-review-28-may-2012/ Just another blogs.bmj.com weblog Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:13:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2012/05/28/richard-lehmans-journal-review-28-may-2012/#comment-16205 Jonathan Nield Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:13:00 +0000 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/?p=17487#comment-16205 “Everyone who arrived with Plasmodium falciparum at the clinics in this
study from northwestern Thailand left alive and cured, using an
artesunate-based regimen.” Not true. The cure rate for the standard 3 day artesunate regime recommended by these authors is closer to 90% than 100% as their own studies have repeatedly shown. However if they had used a seven day regime of the same medicines they would have achieve closer to 100% cure. It is inexplicable in normal terms why they have routinely and knowingly left up to 10% of patients to recrudesce or fail simply because they argue that 7 days treatment is too long for a patient to take medicine unsupervised and that if supervision is really needed it cannot be organised. In addition the too short treatment is probably the major remediable factor contributing to the very resistance development they are worried about.

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