Table 2. Primaquine for malaria treatment.

Malaria*	Primaquine use	Recommended primaquine dose	Comments
Plasmodium falciparum	As a gametocytocide (to block transmission of malaria to mosquitoes)	Single-dose treatment along with ACT	WHO-recommended dose 0.25 mg/kg (previously 0.75 mg/kg) without a requirement for G6PD deficiency testing [20]
P. vivax and P. ovale	For radical cure to eliminate dormant hypnozoites and so prevent relapses	0.25 mg/kg daily for 14 days with chloroquine or ACT For G6PDd patients, some countries recommend 0.75 mg/kg once weekly for 8 weeks	Some countries in the Americas recommend shorter regimens of 0.5 mg/kg daily for 7 days. Some give primaquine as directly observed treatment

*Uncomplicated P. knowlesi malaria, prevalent in some Southeast Asian countries, is usually treated with an ACT without primaquine, as P. knowlesi does not form hypnozoites and its sexual stages (gametocytes) are cleared by the ACT (reviewed in [54]). Abbreviation: ACT, artemisinin combination therapy.