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British researchers working in an East African village say a single dose of an antibiotic appears to stop infections that cause trachoma, the world's leading preventable cause of blindness.
After treating most of the village with azithromycin, the "prevalence and intensity of infection fell dramatically," said Anthony Soloman, the study's lead author.
The village remained virtually disease-free for two years, he said, suggesting that the method might work like a vaccine to break the infection cycle.
Details of the study appear in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Worldwide, trachoma infects 84-million people in 55 nations, blinding 7.6-million. Most are children and the women who care for them.
The disease has been eradicated in industrialized nations. But it persists in hot, dusty regions throughout Africa, southern Asia, Brazil, Mexico and aboriginal communities in Australia.
Left unchecked, 76-million people could go blind in the next 20 years, according to the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.
Trachoma is caused by the microorganism chlamydia trachomatis. It's spread through contact with eye discharge - by the fingers, handkerchiefs or even by flies.
Years of repeated infections scar the inside of the upper eyelid, eventually turning it inward. The eyelashes scratch the cornea, leading to blindness. A simple procedure performed by a nurse can correct the eyelid deformity. But without medication and clean water, people often are reinfected.
Azithromycin is a long-acting antibiotic that has been widely sold in the United States and other industrialized nations since the late 1980s under the name Zithromax.
Pfizer Inc., which makes azithromycin, plans to donate 143-million doses for use in 19 countries.