Abstract
BackgroundExchange transfusion (ET) has remained a controversial adjunct therapy for the treatment of severe malaria. In order to assess the relative contribution of ET to parasite clearance in severe malaria, all patients receiving ET as an adjunct treatment to parenteral quinine or to artesunate were compared with patients treated with parenteral treatment with quinine or artesunate but who did not receive ET. ET was executed using a standardized manual isovolumetric exchange protocol.MethodsAll patients in the Rotterdam Malaria Cohort treated for severe P. falciparum malaria at the Institute for Tropical Diseases of the Harbour Hospital between 1999 and 2011 were included in this retrospective follow-up study. Both a two-stage approach and a log-linear mixed model approach were used to estimate parasite clearance times (PCTs) in patients with imported malaria. Severe malaria was defined according to WHO criteria.ResultsA total of 87 patients with severe malaria was included; 61 received intravenous quinine, whereas 26 patients received intravenous artesunate. Thirty-nine patients received ET as an adjunct treatment to either quinine (n = 23) or artesunate (n = 16). Data from 84 of 87 patients were suitable for estimation of parasite clearance rates. PCTs were significantly shorter after administration of artesunate as compared with quinine. In both models, ET did not contribute significantly to overall parasite clearance.ConclusionManual exchange transfusion does not significantly contribute to parasite clearance in artesunate-treated individuals. There may be a small effect of ET on parasite clearance under quinine treatment. Institution of ET to promote parasite clearance in settings where artesunate is available is not recommended, at least not with manually executed exchange procedures.
Highlights
Exchange transfusion (ET) has remained a controversial adjunct therapy for the treatment of severe malaria
Patients All patients in the Rotterdam Malaria Cohort treated for severe P. falciparum malaria at the Institute for Tropical Diseases of the Harbour Hospital between 1999 and 2011 were included in this retrospective follow-up study
Fiftysix patients (64%) were classified with severe malaria, the remaining 31 patients were given parenteral anti-malarial (24 received quinine while seven received artesunate monotherapy) because parasitaemia was between 2-5%, which is the per-protocol treatment policy at the Harbour hospital of Rotterdam
Summary
Exchange transfusion (ET) has remained a controversial adjunct therapy for the treatment of severe malaria. In circumstances where optimal anti-malarial and supportive treatment is available, severe P. falciparum malaria in industrialized countries is still associated with a case-fatality rate of up to 10% [6]. In an effort to further reduce the mortality of severe malaria, exchange transfusion (ET) is often used as an adjunct therapy to reduce parasite load in cases of high parasitaemia. Many cases of survival from high parasitaemia that were successfully treated with anti-malarials alone have been documented in the literature [9,10,11,12,13,14]
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