Single dose azithromycin to prevent cholera in children

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PROJECT SUMMARY Vibrio cholerae causes 3 million cases of cholera and 100,000 deaths annually. Young children are most vulnerable to cholera, yet they are not protected by current vaccines. More aggressive approaches are needed to prevent the cholera, especially in young children. To meet this challenge, the World Health Organization has targeted the elimination of the global threat of cholera transmission by the year 2030, but the strategic approach to achieve this ambitious goal has not yet been determined. For patients with cholera, effective antibiotic treatment dramatically reduces the severity of infection and prevents the release of trillions of V. cholerae bacteria into the environment. However, while antibiotics are often effectively used to prevent other infections, there are no standards for the use of antibiotics to prevent cholera. As a result, there is tremendous variation in practice, and antibiotics with unproven efficacy are frequently given to prevent cholera. These unproven approaches may needlessly contribute to antibiotic resistance in both V. cholerae and important bystander bacteria as well. For this reason, the World Health Organization Task Force on Cholera Control has recommended a halt to widespread antibiotic use for preventing cholera, and instead recommends that studies be done to test the effectiveness of antibiotics for cholera prevention as well as their impact of this on antimicrobial resistance. Our proposal addresses this exact knowledge gap. We will determine whether single-dose azithromycin is effective in preventing V. cholerae infection in children who live in a household where there has been a case of cholera. Without intervention, these children have a 30% chance of developing infection within one week. While a single-dose of azithromycin is a preferred treatment for cholera, azithromycin to prevent cholera has never been studied. Azithromycin has been found to be beneficial in other mass prevention studies in children, but the impact of single-dose of azithromycin on antibiotic resistance has not been sufficiently tested. We anticipate that this study will result in the more effective and judicious use of antibiotics to prevent cholera in children.