Single-dose rifampicin and BCG to prevent leprosy

The MALTALEP trial compared the efficacy of bacillus Calmette –Guérin (BCG) vaccination followed by single-dose rifampicin (SDR) with BCG vaccination alone in preventing leprosy in household contacts and next-door neighbours of newly diagnosed leprosy patients in Bangladesh(Richardus et al., 2019). It was a large, well designed cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) and 14988 contacts of 1552 new leprosy patients were randomised to receive either BCG alone (7,378) or BCG followed by SDR (7609) 8-12 weeks later.
Source: International Journal of Infectious Diseases - Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Tags: Letter to the Editor Source Type: research