BACKGROUND Despite historical evidence of blinding trachoma, there have been no widespread contemporary surveys of trachoma prevalence in the northern states of Sudan. We aimed to conduct district-level surveys in this vast region in order to map the extent of the problem and estimate the need for trachoma control interventions to eliminate blinding trachoma. METHODS AND FINDINGS Separate, po...

H e a l t h C o n d i t i o n : In 1992, a national survey found that just over 5 percent of Morocco’s population had the blinding disease trachoma. Nearly all the cases were concentrated in five poor, rural provinces in the southeast of the country where 25,000 people showed a serious decline in vision due to trachoma, 625,000 needed treatment for inflammatory trachoma, and 40,000 urgently nee...

I. Definition of trachoma At present in different standard textbooks of ophthalmology the terminology varies. Fuchs (1924) refers to typical trachoma granules or granulations, explaining that these should not be confused with granulation tissue as their structure is entirely different. Elliot (1920) also uses the former term while Swanzy (1925) designates them either trachoma bodies or granulat...

few minutes spent searching Medline reveals some interesting trends: while the total number of scientific publications has exploded over the past 35 years, the number of papers incorporating the keyword " trachoma " has actually decreased (Fig 1A). The number of reviews of trachoma, however, has increased (Fig 1B). Is this a sign that the study of trachoma has matured— that effective treatments...

Trachoma is an ancient scourge, described in the Egyptian Ebers papyrus in 1900 BC and well known to Hippocrates. The disease was endemic in Europe until well into this century, and would-be immigrants to the USA were screened for trachoma by examination of the everted upper eyelid on arrival at Ellis Island, New York. Those in whom the characteristic follicles were seen were put on the next bo...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence and describe the distribution of trachoma among schoolchildren in Brazilian municipalities. METHODS Cross-sectional study, using cluster sampling, of the schoolchildren population of the Brazilian municipalities with Human Development Index - Municipal lower than the national average. This trachoma prevalence survey was conducted by the Ministry of Health,...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Gelatinase B is a matrix metalloproteinase involved in extracellular matrix (ECM) breakdown often associated with scarring and other pathological disorders. It was investigated whether gelatinase B is involved in the pathogenesis of ECM degradation associated with trachomatous conjunctivitis. METHODS Conjunctival biopsy specimens obtained from six patients with active trachoma...

Trachoma is the leading infectious cause of blindness in the world and is associated with precarious living conditions in developing countries. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the prevalence of trachoma in three municipalities of the Marajó Archipelago, located in the state of Pará, Brazil. In 2008, 2,054 schoolchildren from the public primary school system of the urban area of the...

PURPOSE To determine the prevalence of trachoma in all suspected endemic districts in Malawi. METHODS A population-based survey conducted in 16 evaluation units from 12 suspected endemic districts in Malawi (population 6,390,517), using the standardized Global Trachoma Mapping Project (GTMP) protocol. A 2-stage cluster-random sampling design selected 30 households from each of 30 clusters per...

PURPOSE Based on health care records and trachoma rapid assessments, trachoma was suspected to be endemic in Kaskazini A and Micheweni districts of Zanzibar. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of trachomatous inflammation-follicular (TF), and trachomatous trichiasis (TT) in each of those districts. METHODS The survey was undertaken in Kaskazini A and Micheweni districts on Unguja ...