Treatment of travelers' diarrhea: randomized trial comparing rifaximin, rifaximin plus loperamide, and loperamide alone.

Background & Aims: Antimotility agents provide rapid temporary relief of acute diarrhea, whereas antibiotics slowly cure the illness. Thus, the combination of an antimotility agent and an antibiotic may provide greater therapeutic benefit than either drug alone. This study evaluated the efficacy and safety of rifaximin-loperamide in the treatment of travelers' diarrhea.

Antibacterial chemoprophylaxis in the prevention of traveler's diarrhea: evaluation of poorly absorbed oral rifaximin.

The use of antibacterial drugs was first shown to effectively reduce the occurrence of traveler's diarrhea nearly 50 years ago. The approach was not encouraged for general use by a Consensus Development Conference in 1985 because of concerns about adverse effects of the drugs and the possible development of resistance against systemically absorbed drugs. When therapy with poorly absorbed rifaximin was shown to be as effective as therapy with systemically absorbed drugs in shortening the duration of traveler's diarrhea, without the development of resistant coliform flora, the use of rifaximin for the prevention of traveler's diarrhea was studied.

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of rifaximin to prevent travelers' diarrhea.

Background: Travelers' diarrhea causes substantial morbidity and postinfectious irritable bowel syndrome.

Objective: To evaluate nonabsorbable rifaximin for prevention of travelers' diarrhea.

Design: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial.

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli as cause of diarrhea among Mexican adults and US travelers in Mexico.

Background: Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is the most common pathogen identified in travelers to Mexico with diarrhea. There have been few recent studies looking at the etiology of diarrhea in travelers compared with the local resident population.

Methods: We compared enteric pathogens isolated in two populations experiencing acute diarrhea acquired in Guadalajara, Mexico and also compared clinical illness caused by the principal pathogen, ETEC.

Rifaximin: a nonabsorbed antimicrobial in the therapy of travelers' diarrhea.

Background/aims: Bacterial enteropathogens, the major cause of travelers' diarrhea, are customarily treated with antibacterial drugs. Rifaximin, a nonabsorbed antimicrobial was examined as treatment for travelers' diarrhea.

Methods: A randomized, prospective, double-blind clinical trial was carried out in 72 US adults in Mexico.

Piperacillin/tazobactam in the treatment of hospitalized patients with urinary tract infections: an open non-comparative and multicentered trial.

The aim of this multicentered, prospective and open study was to determine the clinical and bacteriological efficacy and safety of piperacillin/tazobactam (4g/500 mg IV tid) in the treatment of 79 adult patients with complicated urinary tract infections (UTI) requiring hospitalization. Forty-seven women and 32 men (mean age 54.2 years, and range 21-91) from 4 Argentinean and 6 Mexican hospitals were enrolled.

Proportional hazards analysis of diarrhea due to enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli and breast feeding in a cohort of urban Mexican children.

Ninety-eight women-infant pairs were followed for up to 50 weeks in the northern part of Guadalajara, Mexico, from August 1986 to July 1987 as part of a community-based, prospective study of the relation between infant feeding patterns and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli producing heat-labile toxin (LT-ETEC) diarrheal disease. Strictly formula-fed children had an incidence of diarrhea over three times that of strictly breast-fed infants and twice that of breast-fed and supplementally fed children. Strictly formula-fed infants colonized by LT-ETEC were symptomatic for diarrhea nearly three times as often as strictly breast-fed infants and twice as often as infants receiving a mixed diet.

Oral aztreonam, a poorly absorbed yet effective therapy for bacterial diarrhea in US travelers to Mexico.

Objective: To evaluate a poorly absorbed antimicrobial with in vitro activity against all major bacterial enteropathogens in oral therapy for bacterial diarrhea.

Design: One hundred ninety-one US students with diarrhea acquired in Mexico received 100 mg of aztreonam or matching placebo three times a day for 5 days. Stools were cultured for bacterial enteropathogens before and after therapy.

Antimicrobial therapy of bacterial diarrhea in adult residents of Mexico--lack of an effect.

Two clinical trials in adults in Mexico are reported. In the first trial, long-term residents of Mexico with acute fecal leukocyte-positive diarrhea were randomized to receive trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (TMP/SMX), clioquinol or a placebo. Neither antimicrobial shortened the illness for all cases or for those with shigellosis or enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli diarrhea.

Use of bismuth subsalicylate for the prevention of travelers' diarrhea.

During the months of July 1977 and July 1985, students from the United States participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial examining the effectiveness of liquid bismuth subsalicylate (BSS) (1977) and two dosages of the tablet formulation of BSS (1985) in preventing diarrhea while in Guadalajara, Mexico. In the first study, 62 subjects received BSS for 3 weeks at a dosage of 60 mL four times daily (4.2 g of BSS/d) compared with 66 students receiving an oral placebo at a similar dosage schedule.

Test-of-cure stool cultures for traveler's diarrhea.

Whether enteropathogens were eradicated or persisted in test-of-cure stool cultures from 251 patients with traveler's diarrhea, the durations of diarrhea were similar within the antimicrobial agent-treated (32 versus 33 h) and placebo-treated (82 versus 96 h) groups. Routine test-of-cure stool cultures can be useful for evaluating treatment failures and for assessing asymptomatic carriage of enteropathogens after treatment, but they are not mandated in the design of placebo-controlled antimicrobial treatment trials in traveler's diarrhea when the focus of the trial is clinical efficacy.

Prevention of travelers' diarrhea by the tablet formulation of bismuth subsalicylate.

Within 48 hours of arrival in Mexico, 182 US students participated in a study to compare the efficacy of two dosages of bismuth subsalicylate (262 mg per tablet) as a prophylactic agent against diarrhea. The students were randomly assigned to receive two tablets (high dose) or one tablet (low dose) of bismuth subsalicylate four times daily or a placebo four times daily during a three-week period. Among these completing the trial, diarrhea (four or more unformed stools in 24 hours or three in eight hours, plus one other symptom) occurred in seven (14%) of 51 receiving the high-dose regimen compared with 15 (24%) of 63 receiving the low-dose regimen and 23 (40%) of 58 in the placebo group.

Ciprofloxacin or trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole as initial therapy for travelers' diarrhea. A placebo-controlled, randomized trial.

The efficacy of ciprofloxacin was compared with that of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole in a placebo-controlled trial of the 5-day treatment of acute diarrhea among 181 adults recently arrived in Guadalajara, Mexico. Both antimicrobial agents were significantly (p less than 0.0001) more efficacious than placebo in the treatment of diarrhea, with the average duration of diarrhea being 29, 20, and 81 hours, respectively, in the ciprofloxacin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, and placebo treatment groups.

Lack of emergence of resistant fecal flora during successful prophylaxis of traveler's diarrhea with norfloxacin.

Norfloxacin, a new quinolone carboxylic acid derivative, was compared with an identical-appearing placebo preparation in a prospective, randomized, double-blind trial for prevention of traveler's diarrhea among 120 U.S. students arriving in Mexico.

Antimicrobial agents in the prevention of travelers' diarrhea.

Each of 433 adults traveling to Guadalajara, Mexico, from the United States during summer months was enrolled in one of four clinical trials of the protective effect of antimicrobial agents against travelers' diarrhea. Only one (2%) of 57 subjects taking trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (160 mg/800 mg daily) experienced diarrhea during a two-week study, whereas eight (14%) of 58 subjects taking trimethoprim alone (200 mg daily) and 10 (33%) of 30 taking placebo developed illness (P less than .05 and P less than .

Correlation between intestinal immune response to colonization factor antigen/I and acquired resistance to enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli diarrhea in an adult rabbit model.

Immunoprotection against diarrhea caused by colonization factor antigen/I (CFA/I)-positive, human-associated, enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli was investigated using the adult rabbit intestinal temporary ligation technique. An oral dose of 1 X 10(8) viable cells of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strain H-10407 (078:H11:CFA/I) produced diarrhea in all animals challenged. Rabbits allowed to survive this challenge dose were re-challenged approximately six weeks later with the result that four of seven (57%) did not develop diarrhea.

Prevention of travelers' diarrhea with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole.

One hundred forty-seven students from the United States were given trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMZ; 160 mg of TMP and 800 mg of SMZ) twice daily for 21 days after their arrival in Mexico. They were watched for the development of diarrhea during the 21 days and for an additional eight days after the termination of TMP-SMZ therapy. Diarrheal illness occurred in 11 (16%) of 67 students taking TMP-SMZ and in 44 (55%) of 80 students receiving a placebo; the differences were significant (P less than 0.