Clofazimine effective alternative to rifampicin for treating Mycobacterium avium lung disease: Study
Netherlands: Findings from a randomized trial showed clofazimine to be a safe and effective alternative to rifampicin for the treatment of Mycobacterium avium complex pulmonary disease (MAC-PD).
Retrospective studies have suggested clofazimine as an alternative to rifampicin in MAC-PD treatment. Sanne M.H. Zweijpfenning, Radboudumc Center for Infectious Diseases, HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and colleagues sought to determine if a treatment regimen consisting of clofazimine-ethambutol-macrolide non-inferior to the standard treatment regimen (rifampicin-ethambutol-macrolide) in the treatment of M.avium complex pulmonary disease in a single centre non-blinded clinical trial.
The study, published in the CHEST journal, revealed that the clofazimine-ethambutol-macrolide regimen showed similar results to the standard rifampicin-ethambutol-macrolide regimen and should be considered in the MAC-PD treatment. In both the arms, the frequency of adverse events was similar but their nature was different.
Adult patients with MAC-PD were randomly assigned in a ratio of 1:1 to receive clofazimine (n=21) or rifampicin (n=19) as an adjunct to an ethambutol-macrolide backbone. The study's primary outcome was sputum culture conversion following six months of treatment.
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