OBJECTIVE To review the literature on ocular toxicity of ethambutol--its background, clinical presentation, toxicity characteristics, management, monitoring, and preventive measures. DATA SOURCES Literature search of Medline from 1962 to May 2005. STUDY SELECTION All related literature in English using the search formula: (ethambutol OR myambutol) AND (eye* OR ophthal* OR ocular) AND (adver...

Background We experienced a rare case of immediate type hypersensitivity and late phase reaction to anti-tubercular therapy consisting of ethambutol and levofloxacin, which occurred in close succession, giving the appearance of a single, continuous reaction to one drug. Case presentation The patient was a man in his 70's who began therapy consisting of isoniazide, rifampicin, and ethambutol f...

1 Issues in MTBC Drug Susceptibility Testing: Ethambutol BACKGROUND Ethambutol (EMB) is an antituberculosis drug used as part of the first line treatment against Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC).1 A primary role of EMB when used in initial combination antituberculosis therapy is to minimize the risk of drug resistance development to companion first line drugs, particularly isoniazid.2 ...

A 24-year-old woman had recently started antitubercular therapy with isoniazid, ethambutol and rifampicin. This therapy was discontinued 2 weeks later due to an itchy, desquamative, erythematous, papular rash, with painful crusts and excoriations, spreading from the face and hands to the rest of the body. 5 days after withdrawal of all drugs, widespread desquamation and exfoliation with predile...

The reliability of the ESP Culture System II (herein referred to as ESP II) for testing susceptibilities of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates to isoniazid, rifampin, ethambutol, and streptomycin was evaluated by comparing results to those of the method of proportion (MOP), which was considered the reference method, for 20 clinical isolates and 30 challenge strains provided by the Centers for ...

Many systemic antimicrobials have been implicated to cause ocular adverse effects. This is especially relevant in multidrug therapy where more than one drug can cause a similar ocular adverse effect. We describe a case of progressive loss of vision associated with linezolid therapy. A 45-year-old male patient who was on treatment with multiple second-line anti-tuberculous drugs including linezo...

A technique is presented for the specific and sensitive determination of ethambutol concentrations in plasma, bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), and alveolar cells (AC) using a high-pressure liquid chromatographic (HPLC)-tandem mass spectrometric (MS-MS) method. The preparation of samples requires a deproteinization step with acetonitrile. The retention times for ethambutol, neostigmine bromide, and...

Introduction Ethambutol is a promising antituberculous drug which has been proposed as a replacement for PAS in the first-line triple therapy of tuberculosis. This suggestion is based on its equal or possible superior effectiveness in man, compared with PAS (Donomae & Yamamoto, 1966; Bobrowitz, 1966), whilst having few toxic effects in the doses at present recommended (Tubercle, 1966; Tiburtius...

Ethambutol (20 mg/kg) was administered orally to 10 patients of pulmonary tuberculosis for seven consecutive days at 8 a.m. after over night fast. On 7th day serum levels were measured at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 24 hr intervals and urinary excretion was estimated at 2, 4, 6 and 24 hr following ethambutol administration. Simultaneous administration of isoniazid (300 mg, orally) for next seven days to the...

In this study, optical coherence tomography (OCT) was used to evaluate retinal thickness in two patients with optic neuropathy who had recently discontinued ethambutol. OCT was used to measure retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness and to map the RNFL, ganglion cell layer (GCL), and inner plexiform layer (IPL). Decreased RNFL thickness was observed in one case. However, the combined RNFL, G...