A study carried in eight Ethiopian villages for two years found that a single dose of an antibiotic is insufficient to nip infection causing trachoma, which happens to be the primary cause of blindness.
A previous study in one Tanzanian village had seemed to show that a single distribution exercise of one antibiotic was enough to completely negate the infection. A new study has suggested that the infection relapses after two years.“I think it's actually good news,” said study co-author Dr. Tom Lietman of the University of California San Francisco. “While it comes back, it comes back very slowly.”
The findings suggest that, azithromycin, administered twice a year has the potential to totally obliterate the infection, according to Lietman. The study has found a place in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Young children show higher tendencies of contracting the infection, which ultimately results in blindness. Trachoma is known to afflict an estimated 84 million people worldwide, and the poor in Africa seem to show a tendency to contract it.
