New antibiotic should be used to treat typhoid

A new and affordable antibiotic called gatifloxacin should be used to treat typhoid. That's the recommendation of Oxford University researchers who have carried out the largest clinical trial yet to compare treatments for the disease. The results of the trial in Kathmandu, Nepal, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Li Ka Shing Foundation, are published in the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases. Typhoid - also known as 'enteric fever' - is characterised by a high fever and diarrhoea. It is transmitted through the ingestion of food or drink contaminated by the faeces or urine of infected people. It causes an estimated 26 million infections each year and over 200,000 deaths and the number of cases is particularly high in parts of South Asia. The standard treatment for enteric fever since the 1950s was the drug chloramphenicol.