A Comparative Study of Furazolidone and Placebo in Addition to Oral Rehydration in the Treatment of Acute Infantile Diarrhea

Between July and October 1987 an outpatient study of 191 children with acute diarrhea was undertaken in two rural communities in Mexico. Through a double-blind randomization we compared the efficacy of a combination therapy of furazolidone, 7.5 mg/kg/day, plus standard oral rehydration therapy (ORT) (96 patients) versus a placebo plus ORT (95 patients), each given for 5 days. Diarrheal stool samples were collected from all patients before therapy. By means of a two-vial transport media system the samples were sent to a university laboratory and examined for viral, bacterial, and parasitic organisms. The most commonly isolated organisms were enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (13%) and Giardia lamblia (13%). Patients who received furazolidone plus ORT showed a greater reduction in duration of diarrhea when compared with those receiving placebo plus ORT (63.4 h versus 71.44 h). There was also a trend toward shorter duration of diarrhea in patients with Giardia who were treated with furazolidone/ORT compared with Giardia patients in the placebo/ORT group. When fecal leukocytes were present in the stool, the furazolidone/ORT-treated patients had a significantly higher percentage of clinical cures (79% versus 54%, p = 0.03) and an overall shorter duration of diarrhea (62.0 h versus 80.6 h, p = 0.055) at the end of 5 days of therapy than did the placebo/ORT-treated group.