Controlled Trials with Trisulfapyrimidines in the Treatment of Chronic Trachoma

Chlorhexidine as an effective agent against Chlamydia trachomatis in vitro and in vivo

“…However, since there was no untreated group, it could not be determined whether factors other than treatment could have contributed to the improvements detected. No obvious change in standards of living occurred during this period as had occurred during treatment trials among American Indian children in boarding schools (3,4,9) in which improvement was found in placebo groups.…”

“…There has been considerable controversy about the most effective treatment for trachoma (2,4,7,9). One reason for this is that the various trials have been conducted by using different treatment regimens on different populations in different cultural and socioeconomic situations.…”

Eradication of trachoma worldwide

“…It became clear that it was a bacterium rather than a virus, as had previously been thought, and therefore susceptible to antibiotics. A number of treatment campaigns were undertaken with oral sulphonamides in North American Indian populations, but although successful in controlling trachoma, these resulted in severe side effects in a few cases, and had to be discontinued 7. Topical tetracycline ointment was shown to be effective in individual cases when applied once daily for 6 weeks, or for 5 days a month for 6 months, but attempts to control trachoma through topical treatment were not successful at the community level, owing to poor compliance and rapid reinfection when only individual cases were treated 8…”

Community-based intervention programs for trachoma control

“…Field trials of drug therapy provide equivocal results on long-term effectiveness of this modality. With single cycles of topical treatment, subjects in endemic areas show a short-term treatment effect but essentially revert back to pretreatment prevalences after several months [4,5,7]. Long-term suppression of inflammation, or cure rates, or decreased positivity rates for chlamydia, were observed only with family-based treatment extending for at least a year [3] or with community-based mass treatment [19].…”