Mohammad Imran, Fazal Ur Rahman, Asmat Ara Asmat, Aurangzeb, Shireen Khan.
An open non-comparative study of the efficacy and safety of oral Azithromycin in Pediatric infections.
Pak Paed J Jan ;22(1):1-5.

This randomized study on the clinical efficacy. safety and tolerability of single daily dose of azithromycin in paediatric respiratory and skin and soft tissue infections was carried out in paediatric "A" unit. Postgraduate Medical Institute/Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar. Patients from either sex with age range of 6 month to 9 years were included in the study. A total of 40 patients with mild to moderate respiratory infections and/or skin and soft tissue infections were enrolled but 6 of them were lost to long term follow up and were excluded from study analysis. The clinical diagnosis at the time of enrollment were acute pharyngitis in 2 patients (5.88%), pneumonia in 17 patients (50.0%), asthmatic bronchitis in 12 patients (35.31%), and skin infection in 3 patients (8.82%). After initial assessment, azithromycin was given to the patients at a dose of 10mg/kg/day once daily for 3 consecutive days. Follow up visits were conducted at days 4-5 and 10-12 of the study. A1 the end of the study. the clinical success rate (cure or improvement) was 94.12% i.e. 32 out of 34 patients, while only two paticles (5.88%) showed relapse of symptoms after initial improvement. Bacteriological eradication was noted in 90.90% of the patients with positive cultures at the baseline. Tolerability and compliance was excellent. A total of 8 side effects (diarrhea and skin rash) were reported by 7 patients However, all of these were mild and none of the patients were withdrawn from the study because of side effects. It was concluded that azithromycin is an effective and safe alternative to erythromycin and other standard therapeutic regimens in treatment of community acquired respiratory and skin and soft tissue infections, especially when the etiologic agent is not known.

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