Treatment of vaginal trichomoniasis with 2-acetylamino-5-nitrothiazole (aminitrozole) given orally.

Trichomoniasis is one of the commonest and most troublesome conditions encountered in gynaecological and venereal disease clinics. Inadequate methods of recognition of T. vaginalis have in the past impeded the acquisition of knowledge of its transmission. Inadequate methods of treatment have provided many disappointments for both patient and doctor on account of the high relapse rate with the many preparations which have proved so lethal to the parasite in vitro. In recent years, the importance of the sexual transmission of trichomoniasis has been increasingly stressed. The use of cultures for diagnosis has enabled the parasite to be found more easily in the seminal fluid of the consorts ofwomen suffering from this infection. For example, Perl, Guttmacher, and Raggazoni (1956) found T. vaginalis by culture in the semen of 28 (58 per cent.) out of 48 husbands of wives with vaginal trichomoniasis. To date, the only treatments which will abolish the parasite from view, at least for a time, have been local. The frequent relapse rate has suggested that the parasite may remain too inaccessible in Skene's tubules, Bartholin's glands, the bladder, or the rectum in the female, or in the prostate, seminal vesicles, or Cowper's or Tyson's glands in the male, to result in re-infection of the vagina. That there is an urgent need for an effective drug which can be given systemically to both sexes has been appreciated for many years by all who have had to treat vaginal trichomoniasis. Hopes that neoarsphenamine, penicillin, Atebrin, and other chemotherapeutic substances would serve were never realized. Waletsky (1950) found that the drug aminitrozole was effective in enterohepatitis (blackhead disease) in turkeys, which condition is caused by a flagellated protozoon, Histomonas meleagridis. As a result of itt