Treatment
Cryptococcosis that does not affect the central nervous system can be treated with fluconazole alone.
Cryptococcal meningitis should be treated for two weeks with intravenous Amphotericin B 0.7–1.0 (mg/kg)/day and oral flucytosine 100 (mg/kg)/day (or intravenous flucytosine 75 (mg/kg)/day if the patient is unable to swallow). This should then be followed by oral fluconazole 200 mg daily for ten weeks and then 200 mg daily until the patient's CD4 count is above 100 for three months and, if infected, his HIV viral load is undetectable.
Intravenous Ambisome 4 (mg/kg)/day may be used but is not superior: its main use is in patients who do not tolerate Amphotericin B. The 200 (mg/kg)/day dose for flucytosine is not more effective, is associated with more side-effects and should not be used.
In Africa, oral fluconazole at a rate of 200 mg daily is used. However, this does not result in cure because it merely suppresses the fungus and does not kill it; viable fungus can continue to be grown from CSF of patients who have taken fluconazole for many months. An increased dose of 400 mg daily does not improve outcomes, but preliminary data from Uganda shows that very high doses of 1200 mg or more per day may be effective. The duration of this treatment and the post-treatment maintenance dose is not known.
Read more about this topic: Cryptococcus Neoformans
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts.... The question “Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?” should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“Ambivalence reaches the level of schizophrenia in our treatment of violence among the young. Parents do not encourage violence, but neither do they take up arms against the industries which encourage it. Parents hide their eyes from the books and comics, slasher films, videos and lyrics which form the texture of an adolescent culture. While all successful societies have inhibited instinct, ours encourages it. Or at least we profess ourselves powerless to interfere with it.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“To me, nothing can be more important than giving children books, It’s better to be giving books to children than drug treatment to them when they’re 15 years old. Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn’t have to put them in prisons?”
—Fran Lebowitz (20th century)