The Eye Care Blog

Pfizer Inc.'s Zithromax antibiotic may quadruple the risk of being re-infected with a potentially blinding eye infection that the drug is intended to treat.

Zithromax worked against the initial outbreak of the infection, called trachoma, those taking the drug were more likely to be re-infected than those treated with surgery alone, said a study published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The antibiotic appeared to blunt the immune system's ability to develop natural resistance by shortening exposure to the bacteria, the study said. „This is like the law of unintended consequences,” said Deborah Dean, co-author of the paper and a researcher at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute who is working on a vaccine for Trachoma.

Trachoma is the second-most frequent cause of blindness. The study should encourage efforts to find a vaccine for trachoma since antibiotics don't appear to treat the long-term problem. About 80 million people, most in developing countries, are infected, and 8 million have been blinded or lost some vision, according to the International Trachoma Initiative.

However, Pfizer infectious disease researcher Charles Knirsch said he is skeptical of the paper's conclusion related to natural immunity because the researchers didn't provide evidence to support that finding. He said there is no good way to test to determine whether someone has developed immunity to trachoma. The higher recurrence of infections among a certain group might be explained by geographical location. Other studies, including one on patients in Morocco, showed that treating the entire population with Zithromax almost wipes out the disease, Knirsch said.

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Filed under Eye Treatment

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