Albendazole

Literature Reviews

COMPOUNDING

Efficacy of albendazole ointment on cutaneous larva migrans in 2 young children.

Caumes E. CHn Infect Dis 2004; 38(11): 1647-1648.

The author is a physician affiliated with Service des Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Hopital Pitre-Salpêtriere, Paris, France. He briefly reports on treatment of two cases of cutaneous larva migrans in a 2-year old boy who had visited Senegal with his parents and a 2-year old girl who had visited the Dominican Republic with her parents. The condition, caused by cutaneous migration of animal hookworm larvae, manifests itself as mobile pruritic skin lesions and can successfully be treated with oral ivermectin or oral albendazole. Unfortunately, oral administration of these two drugs is contraindicated in young children. A 10% albendazole ointment was prepared by crushing three 400-mg tablets of albendazole in 12 g of petroleum jelly. The ointment was applied 3 times dailyfor 10 days, and the lesions disappeared within 7 days in both cases. Three months after treatment, the girl developed a second lesion on another part of her body, which was not considered to be a failure of the initial treatment. She responded to a second course of treatment with the albendazole ointment; like the first lesion, the second disappeared within 7 days of beginning treatment. In a recent review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, it was reported that "...hookworm infection is among the most important tropical diseases in humans; the use of disability-adjusted life years as a quantitative measure of the burden of disease reveals thatthis infection outranks African trypanosomiasis, dengue, Chagas' disease, schistosomiasis, and leprosy."1

Elizabeth Foy

College of Pharmacy

Mary E. MacCara, PharmD

College of Pharmacy and Department of Family Medicine

Dalhousie University

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Copyright International Journal of Pharmaceutical Compounding Jan/Feb 2005
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