PubMed1990
Due to mass tourism and the exodus of refugees from Africa and Asia, typhoid fever, common in the tropics, has reappeared in the more temperate climates. The clinical signs of prolonged fever, headache, general malaise, anorexia and abdominal pain are not specific enough to allow diagnosis and only a blood culture will prove the presence of the disease. Unless there is resistance, which is in fact rare in Southeast Asia, chloramphenicol, an effective, well tolerated and cheap antibiotic, remains the treatment of choice for typhoid. In the search for an alternative treatment a cephalosporin, ceftriaxone (Rocephin) seems promising. It has a low MIC of 0.05 micrograms/ml for S. typhi and a high level of biliary excretion which destroys S. typhi in the bile and thus prevents relapse. In Southeast Asia three consecutive studies, of which two were randomised and comparative with chloramphenicol given for 14 days, showed that treatment for two or three days, 3 or 4 g per day of ceftriaxone was as effective as chloramphenicol and was not followed by relapse. In 46 adults there was one failure with ceftriaxone (in an immunocompromised patient) and none in the 30 patients treated with chloramphenicol, three of which, however, relapsed in the 15 days after completion of treatment. Defervescence was a little more rapid with chloramphenicol (six to seven days) than with ceftriaxone (seven to ten days) even though blood, urine and stool cultures were all negative from the third or fourth day of treatment.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)