RESUMO
We evaluated the clinical and therapeutic response to artesunate retocaps in 32 children admitted to the Fundação de Medicina Tropical do Amazonas (Amazon Foundation of Tropical Medicine) with clinical characteristics of moderate and severe malaria. Of these, 29 were infected with P. falciparum and 3 with P. vivax. They improved clinically 24 hours after the beginning of therapy, with 33. 3% of patients without fever, and after 48 hours, 77.2% of the children had no fever. The monitoring of asexual forms of the parasites showed that on D2 (day 2 of treatment) 58.6% of children with P. falciparum infection had no more parasites in the blood stream, on D4 all children had negative slides both for P. falciparum and for P. vivax infection. In a long-term follow up, we found 66.6% recrudescence in P. falciparum patients. The results enabled the conclusion that artesunate retocaps are efficient in practice and their use rapidly reduces the parasitemia and improves the patients' clinical picture. However, in P. falciparum malaria the recrudescence rate was very high. We observed no side effects from this drug.