A 5-Year Study of Patients with Pulmonary Tuberculosis Treated at Home in a Controlled Comparison of Isoniazid plus PAS with 3 Regimens of Isoniazid Alone

Evans, C and Devadatta, S and Fox, Wallace and Gangadharam, P R J and Menon, N K and Ramakrishnan, C V and Sivasubramanian, S and Somasundaram, P R and Stott, H and Velu, S (1969) A 5-Year Study of Patients with Pulmonary Tuberculosis Treated at Home in a Controlled Comparison of Isoniazid plus PAS with 3 Regimens of Isoniazid Alone. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 41 (1). pp. 1-16. ISSN 00429686

[thumbnail of 196902.pdf]
Preview
PDF
196902.pdf - Published Version

Download (122kB)

Abstract

This report from the Tuberculosis Chemotherapy Centre, Madras, describes theprogress, over a 5-year period, of 341 patients with newly diagnosed, sputum-positive tuberculosis. All the patients were treated on a domiciliary basis. In the first year, the patients received, on the basis of random allocation, a standard regimen of isoniazid plus PAS or 1 of 3 regimens of isoniazid alone. Previous reports have shown that the response in the first year was substantially superior with the standard regimen, and that the bacteriological relapse rates in the second year were fairly similar for the 4 regimens. The findings in the present report extend the latter conclusion to the end of 5 years. Further, when considered together with the findings in an earlier study, they have shown that isoniazid, given as maintenance chemotherapy in the second year, was highly effective in preventing bacteriological relapse in patients who, at 1 year, had bacteriologically quiescent disease and no residual cavitation ; the effect was, however, less marked in patients with residual cavitation at 1 year. Patients who were clear-cut failures of the allocated chemotherapy and those who had a bacteriological relapse in the second or subsequent years were usually re-treated with streptomycin plus PAS or streptomycin plus pyrazinamide, and if this was ineffective, with cycloserine plus thioacetazone or cycloserine plus ethionamide. Considering the findings over the 5-year period for all patients, 16 died from nontuberculous causes and 1 took his discharge prematurely. Of the remainder, 86% had bacteriologically quiescent disease at 5 years, 6 % had bacteriologically active disease and 8 % had died of tuberculosis. These findings confirm the value of well-organized domiciliary chemotherapy, which was established by an earlier report from the Centre, and are particularly encouraging for developing countries such as India, where tuberculosis is a major problem and resources are limited

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Tuberculosis > Epidemiological Research
Divisions: Clinical Research
Depositing User: Dr. Rathinasabapati R
Date Deposited: 19 Jul 2013 07:31
Last Modified: 08 Mar 2016 07:00
URI: http://eprints.nirt.res.in/id/eprint/94

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item