London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

A team of researchers led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine will today announce a major breakthrough in the treatment and control of trachoma - the second most common cause of global blindness, and a disease which attacks the poorest of the world's poor.

Their findings, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, reveal that mass treatment of trachoma-endemic communities with just one round of the antibiotic azithromycin, aided by periodic treatment with tetracycline eye ointment of individuals with the active disease, can stop the transmission of trachoma for up to two years and reduce the prevalence of infection to virtually nil.

The team treated residents of a trachoma endemic community with azithromycin (97% of the 978 residents were treated), and took conjunctival swabs from everyone in the village intermittently for a period of two years after treatment. All individuals who had clinically active trachoma were also given tetracycline eye ointment at 6, 12 and 18 month intervals. The researchers found that infection rates in the village fell dramatically from 9.5 % (pre-treatment) to 2.1% at two months and just 0.1% at 24 months.

Two-thirds of blindness is treatable, yet an estimated 45 million people worldwide are blind and, every year, an additional 1-2 million people join them. A child goes blind every minute. These findings will have a significant impact on the treatment of one of the major blinding diseases, helping trachoma control programmes to refine antibiotic distribution strategies.

Anthony Solomon, Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the lead author of the study, comments: 'The prevalence of trachoma infection fell dramatically in this trachoma-endemic community following the mass treatment programme, and the decline continued for two years, after which there was only one infected person among the 842 residents we tested. The results of this study are extremely encouraging. Perhaps we now have a tool that we can use to finally eliminate trachoma from the world'.

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is a member of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) which in conjunction with the World Health Organisation and many NGOs around the world forms VISION 2020: The Right to Sight, a global initiative which aims to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020.