A middle-aged man presented to the office for the first time, complaining of severe itchiness, particularly when he would go to bed. Pt denied anyone else living in the house, so no one else in the house was presented with similar symptoms. Pt states that his itch was relieved by a hot shower and walking outside in the streets. On physical exam, he was noted to have multiple erythematous macular patches, particularly on the back. Pt was thought to have scabies. So I decided to find an article that involved the treatment of scabies.

The article I decided to present was from The New England Journal of Medicine and was published in December 2015, making this article fairly recent. The study itself was done in Fiji. The main point of this study was to find a treatment that decreased the prevalence of scabies, which was also found to be associated with impetigo. As we know, if impetigo goes untreated, it can lead to systemic complications. This article discusses three different types of drug administration for the treatment of scabies.

The island was divided into three groups depending on location. There was a total of 2051 participants in this study. Each group was given a different form of treatment. The first group was given standard care of permethrin, to those patients that had scabies only, and also to anyone that was in contact with those patients. The second group received a mass administration of permethrin, regardless of their scabies status, and the third group received mass administration of ivermectin, regardless of their scabies status. It was found that the group that had to greatest decline in scabies prevalence was the third group, which was given the mass administration of ivermectin.

Mass Drug Administration For Scabies

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