A Controlled Trial of Erythromycin in Adults with Nonstreptococcal Pharyngitis

The local physician has long maligned for profligate use of antibiotics in treating infections of the upper-respiratory-tract and pharyngitis. Academic medicine always "knew" that the only important bacterial, and therefore treatable, cause of "strep" pharyngitis was Streptococcus . Komaroff and his coworkers found serological evidence of active infections with Chlamydia trachomatis and Mycoplasma in 30% of adult patients with pharyngitis. Because these two organisms are in some circumstances susceptible to erythromycin, the authors hypothesize that erythromycin could reduce morbidity or the number of secondary cases or both in households of patients with nonstreptococcal pharyngitis (NSP). Thus, they initiated a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial of the efficacy of erythromycin base in adult patients with pharyngitis.