Abstract
Malaria remains endemic in multiple countries, in which interventions based on antimalarial drugs have had limited effect due to the spread of drug resistance. Majority of malaria cases are caused by the parasites Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax and the evolution of drug resistance has a different temporal and geographic pattern between these Plasmodium species. In order to compare the different pattern, we develop here a compartmental model to estimate the effect of the monotherapies, combination therapies, the asymptomatic cases, the gametocytocidal use, the window of selection, the prophylactic period, and the resistance cost. The evaluation of the reproductive numbers and simulations showed the emergence of drug resistance in P. falciparum faster than P. vivax due to the highest effectiveness of the treatment against sensitive parasites but the delay to the emergence depends on the therapy. By contrast, the slower spread of drug resistance in P. vivax was produced by the transmission of sensitive parasites before the treatment and their transmission through the asymptomatic cases. These results suggest that improvements in the rapid attention can increase the risk of drug resistance and development of new therapies is necessary.