TREATMENT OF TRICHOMONAL VAGINITIS AND URETHRITIS AND THEIR COMPLICATIONS WITH METRONIDAZOLE (“FLAGYL”)

Both the literature and personal investigations (Popchristov, 1957) indicate beyond any doubt that the relative percentage of urethritis and vaginitis due to Trichomonas vaginalis rises with increased rates of non-gonococcal genital infections. Of 278 patients with non-gonococcal urethritis and colpitis, and 102 patients with gonorrhoea seen at the Dispensary of the Institute for Skin and Venereal Diseases during the first six months of 1960, T. vaginalis was proved to be the aetiological factor in 75 (27 per cent.). An assumption exists that T. vaginalis is easily and commonly detected in females. As 40 per cent. of our patients suffering from trichomoniasis are males, we share the view that trichomoniasis is as common in men as in women. Increased attention to male cases of suspected trichomonal non-gonococcal urethritis and improved diagnostic methods have increased the number of male cases known to suffer from trichomoniasis. In the past, the various treatments available were relatively inefficient and also inconvenient as their local and instrumental nature involved much waste of time for both patients and medical staff. Treatment was often uncompleted and recurrence, incomplete cure, and neurosis were encouraged. The past results of the oral treatment of trichomoniasis with arsenic, acridine, chinoline preparations, antibiotics, and sulphonamides were even less encouraging. At the first Canadian Symposium on non-gonococcal urethritis and trichomoniasis (Montreal, September, 1959) the first observations were presented of a new synthetic compound (8823 R.P., "Flagyl"). Investigations carried out with this imidazole derivative by Cosar and Joulou (1959)