An oral antibiotic used to treat leprosy is safe and well-tolerated in the treatment of children with challenging-to-treat mycobacterium abscessus infections, the CHOC infectious disease team has found.
In their study, clofazimine was given to 27 patients during an outbreak of odontogenic mycobacterial infections as part of a multidrug regimen. Though clofazimine performed well in test-tube experiments against M. abscessus, reports in children were previously limited.
This group of patients represents the highest number of children to receive clofazimine outside of leprosy treatment settings.
The study findings were published in the July 2019 Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society. Its authors are CHOC infectious disease specialists Dr. Felice Adler-Shohet; Dr. Jasjit Singh; Dr. Delma Nieves; Dr. Negar Ashouri; and Dr. Antonio Arrieta; as well as Cathy Flores, a CHOC clinical research nurse coordinator, and Tuan Tran, an infectious disease pharmacist at CHOC.
The patients who received the antibiotic were among a large group of children who underwent pulpotomy procedures at a dental practice with a contaminated water system.
CHOC’s team added clofazimine to its original first-line medication regimen after receiving special use approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
An additional benefit of use of clofazimine was the ability to stop use of an intravenous antibiotic given thrice daily that prompted many side effects, the team found.
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