Supplemental sulfone (dapsone) therapy. Use in treatment of chloroquine-resistant falciparum malaria

Abstract

Shortly SHORTLY after the antimalarial activity of the parent sulfone dapsone was discovered, the drug was discarded as too toxic for human use.^1-4This occurred at the time when it was assumed that the amount of sulfone necessary for treatment was similar to that used with the sulfa drugs, ie, 1 to 2 gm daily. As a result, total doses of 36 and 16 gm of dapsone were administered over periods as short as nine days in the first human trials of dapsone as an antimalarial agent.^5,6In both clinical trials, dapsone was effective against<i>Plasmodium falciparum</i>, but later reports of its toxicity^1-4and the successful introduction of the 4-aminoquinoline drugs led to abandonment of dapsone as an antimalarial drug. In 1949, dapsone was introduced for the treatment of leprosy,<i>7</i>and soon after small daily doses of dapsone were found to be therapeutically effective and relatively non-toxic (ie, 100 mg or