Author(s)

Ilia Brondz, Anton Brondz

Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Department of Chemistry, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.

Malaria is one of the most harmful diseases on the globe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), several million people die every year from malaria, and most of them are children. Hundreds of millions of fresh cases of ma- laria are registered by the WHO every year, and more than one-third of the earth’s population lives in malaria-endemic areas. Primaquine is an important antimalarial drug because it has gametocytocidal properties and prevents relapse in most cases. However, primaquine is a highly toxic substance, especially to the Negroid race (in Africa, Australia and North, Latin and South America) and some others. Negroid male children are most vulnerable to the toxic effects of primaquine. The toxicity of primaquine can be enhanced in mixtures with other antimalarial drugs. In the present study, unprocessed primaquine and primaquine tablets highly contaminated with quinocide (I. Brondz, Historical Overview of Chromatography and Related Techniques in Analysis of Antimalarial Drug Primaquine (Editor I. Brondz), Nova Sci- ence Publishers, Inc. (2011) ISSN 978-1-61761-944-1) are discussed versus monoenantiomeric primaquine as a drug. The contamination of primaquine with quinocide enhances the toxicity of primaquine by additive or synergistic action. The use of contaminated primaquine can be harmful. Development of a useful antimalarial vaccine can take a decade or longer. This paper describes the possibility of preparing antimalarial generic monoenantiomeric primaquine, free of both quinocide contamination and the ineffective enantiomer of primaquine, using fractionation by supercritical fluid chromatography equipped with a new experimental High Resolution Isomer Column (HRIC). By this approach, it is pos- sible to produce a significant amount of pharmacologically active enantiomer of primaquine at relatively low cost for a broad range of patients sensitive to contaminated primaquine. Leading pharmacopoeias should no longer deny the pre- sence of the toxic contaminant quinocide in relatively high concentrations in unprocessed primaquine and in prima- quine tablets. New standards for antimalarial primaquine diphosphate tablets must be adopted in pharmacopoeias and by the pharmaceutical industry.

Primaquine; Quinocide; High Resolution Isomer Column; Monoenantiomeric Primaquine; Malaria; SFC; New Technology Column HRIC

I. Brondz and A. Brondz, "The Technology for Preparation of Generic (Monoenantiomeric) Antimalarial Drug Primaquine by Using Supercritical Fluid Chromatography. Separation of Primaquine from Quinocide: Simultaneous Resolution of the Enantiomers of Primaquine and Their Separation from Quinocide in One Run," American Journal of Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 3 No. 12A, 2012, pp. 884-890. doi: 10.4236/ajac.2012.312A117.