MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Asha Bowen FRACP Menzies School of Health Research Charles Darwin University Darwin, NT, Australia Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Bowen: The Skin Sore Trial found that short courses (3 days of twice daily dosing or 5 days of once daily dosing) of oral co-trimoxazole worked just as well for treating impetigo in remote Indigenous Australian children as the standard treatment with an intramuscular injection of penicillin (BPG). Despite many randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on this common infection of childhood, few have been conducted where impetigo is severe and endemic and with over 100 million children affected at any one time, ongoing research is needed. This is only the second RCT to study impetigo in children where the problem is endemic and often severe. In our study, 70% of children had severe impetigo with a median of 3 body regions affected. BPG injections are painful and we knew from previous studies that not many children were receiving them. Our study confirmed that 30% of children had injection site pain 48 hours after receipt of the injection and 5 children ran away when they found out that they were randomised to the injection arm of the study. (more…)