Study Finds Medication Prevents Travelers' Diarrhea
HOUSTON—(May 16, 2005)— An antibiotic can be safely used to prevent attacks of diarrhea that plague millions of globe-trotting vacationers and business travelers, a Houston research team reports this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine.“Our findings show that rifaximin is an ideal drug for prevention of travelers’ diarrhea, an illness that affects an estimated 20 million international travelers each year,” said lead author Herbert DuPont, M.D., director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston and chief of internal medicine at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital.
“This medication's effectiveness, lack of side effects, and its ability to avoid development of resistant strains of bacteria will allow us to change the way we manage this disease,” DuPont said.
The clinical trial reported this week studied 210 U.S. students studying Spanish in Mexico during the summer of 2003. Only 14.74 percent of those who took a daily dose of rifaximin for two weeks suffered from diarrhea, while 53.7 percent of those who took placebos came down with the illness, which also includes nausea, vomiting and stomach pain.
Traveler's diarrhea has been treated for years by antibiotics because it is caused by bacteria found mainly in local food. DuPont's group previously showed that rifaximin is safe and effective therapy for the illness in studies carried out in Mexico, Peru, India and Kenya. The antibiotic has been available in Europe and elsewhere for years to treat diarrhea. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the antibiotic for treatment of traveler's diarrhea a year ago.
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Study Finds Medication Prevents Travelers' Diarrhea
posted by Prospector @ 9:49 AM
2 Comments:
It's funny that they used US students studying Spanish in Mexico as the guinea pigs (or cobayas en Espanol.) My theory is that Montezuma's revenge has a little more to do with the tequila poured down student's throats by waitresses wearing shot glass bandoleers than with bad Mexican water. Although who knows? Last time I went to Cancun I suffered from a headache and diarrhea and vomiting. The only cause I can think of is dirty Mexican bacteria in the ice in the fourteen margaritas I drank while getting horribly sunburned on the beach on the first day.
I would propose further that the dirty Mexican bacteria in the ice in the margaritas also causes a host of other symptoms like loss of inhibition, loss of motor control, aggressive behavior, bruising, memory loss, and empty wallet syndrome.
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