A new study led by a Tulane University researcher and recently published in the journal, Lancet Infectious Diseases, could change the way doctors treat the common, sexually transmitted parasite, Trichomonas vaginalis.
Infectious diseases research medicine health welcome to outbreak news interviews and now broadcasting from the outbreak news sky large studios in beautiful west central florida here is your host microbiologist and editor of outbreak news today comm robert herriman well hey everybody this is robert and welcome to outbreak news interviews now a new study led by
A tulane university researcher and recently published in the journal lancet infectious diseases could change the way doctors treat the common sexually transmitted parasite trichomonas vaginalis here to talk about trichomoniasis and the new study is the lead author infectious disease epidemiologists at the tulane university school of public health and tropical
Medicine dr. patricia kissinger dr. kissinger welcome to the show ma’am thank you okay well before we get into the study and his findings let’s talk a little bit about the sexually transmitted disease what is trichomoniasis and how common is it so trichomoniasis is a parasite it was once thought to be a commensal meaning that they thought that it really didn’t
Have any in it wasn’t important in in health but now they know that it causes an array of reproductive tract infections and problems with birth outcomes in addition to that it amplifies the possibility of transmission of hiv how it is very highly prevalent it’s one of the most it is the most common non viral sexually transmitted disease in the world they estimate
That about 143 million cases happen each year it globally it’s about 5% infection rate in the united states is about 1.8 percent of women have these infections right and as you said it is transmitted by sexual contact and you talk a little bit about the complications what are the typical symptoms so unfortunately the majority of women who have it don’t have overt
Symptoms the persons who do have symptoms it would be a discharge of frothy discharge from the vaginal area sometimes malodorous and sometimes discolored it can cause severe itching and it can cause inflammation which can sometimes cause pain upon urination and painful sex now historically and currently single dose metronidazole is the first-line treatment for
Trichomoniasis however your study reveals that this may not be the best treatment for women dr. kissinger can you give a summary of your study and how you conducted this research that’s right so what i noticed is that in the populations i was studying there was a high rate of repeat infection and i went back into the literature and i found that that the reason
Or the rationale that they had the single dose was because of a number of a series of very small studies that were not powered to determine equivalency that were done in 1970s and i looked and i we did a meta-analysis which is a type of study that you take all of those studies and and sort of synthesize them into one statistic and we found out that women who were
On the single dose were about twice as likely to get a repeat infection as women who were on multi dose so then we decided to do a study we had already done a study in hiv-positive women and found that the single dose was not as effective that the multi dose was much more effective than the single dose and we decided to repeat that same study in hiv uninfected
Which the majority of women who have trichomoniasis are not hiv infected and what were your findings the findings were very similar to what we had found in hiv negative and in our meta-analysis that about that uh there was a 43% reduction in repeat infections with triggermen trichomoniasis at trichomonas vaginalis if the woman was on multi dose compared to single
Dose now i read it in a press release that you believe that the cdc will change its treatment recommendations because of the results of this study can you talk about that it is my great hope i know that the cdc and nih were both a national institute of health we’re both very interested in this study because trichomoniasis while very very prevalent has not had the
Attention that it’s needed and the the treatment guidelines will not be changed for another two years and 2020 is when they’re going to change the treatment guidelines so it might take a while for this to happen so in the meantime physicians or providers medical providers will need to make the decision that they want to change it on their own but i do think that
There’s great interest in it because the the studies were so similar in their findings there’s so much consistency of findings between these studies that we did that really demonstrate that the single dose is not as effective as a multi dose now last question are you planning any follow-up research to this soon yes so nuts thank you for asking so now we know that
It’s that the single dose doesn’t work as well in hiv uninfected it doesn’t work as well as in hiv infected women but we don’t know anything about their sexual partners so we so sexual partners about 70 percent of women who have trichomonas vaginalis or trichomoniasis 70 percent of those partners are also infected so what we need to know is what’s the best treatment
For them right now the recommendations are again to the single dose for men should be moved to a multi dose for men so we’re hoping to or in the process of writing a grant right now to see if we can examine this topic this dosing situation in men very interesting work and i want to thank you dr. patricia kissinger for your time and your expertise well thank you so
Much for inviting me to for this interview but thank you so much
Transcribed from video
Trichomonas vaginalis treatment: New research shows multi-dose metronidazole is better in women By Outbreak News TV
