Reference
Niven, J. C. (1940). Mapharside in the treatment of Malaria. Kuala Lumpur, Federated Malay States Government Press.
Summary
Mapharside in the Treatment of Malaria is a 1940 booklet documenting the effectiveness in using mapharside to treat patients with malaria. The 3 species of Plasmodium (parasitic organism) that mapharside was used to combat in this study were P. falciparum, P. malariae and P. vivax.
Plasmodium image by Ute Frevert; false color by Margaret Shear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmodium#/media/File:Malaria.jpg
The results of this study revealed that mapharside was only effective and fast-acting against P. vivax but was of little help against P. falciparum and P. malariae. In fact, when it came to combating human malaria that was caused by P. falciparum, an existing medication known as quinine was shown to be faster in reducing the quantity of asexual P. falciparum parasites in the patients, compared to mapharside.
With these results in mind, the late author J. C. Niven concluded that mapharside’s use against human malaria was confined mostly to treating human malaria arising from the P. vivax parasite.
For more up to date information on human malaria, consider referring to these information sources.
- Boh, S. (2017, September 23). Singapore vulnerable to ‘super malaria’ parasite but rapid spread here unlikely. The Straits Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/singapore-vulnerable-to-super-malaria-parasite-but-rapid-spread-here-unlikely
- Kremsner, P. G., & Krishna, S. (Eds.). (2019). Encyclopedia of Malaria. https://doi-org.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/10.1007/978-1-4614-8757-9
- National Centre for Infectious Diseases. (2020, September 14). Malaria. https://www.ncid.sg/Health-Professionals/Diseases-and-Conditions/Pages/Malaria.aspx
- World Health Organization. (n. d.). Malaria. https://www.who.int/ith/diseases/malaria/en/
