Interventions for Tuberculosis Control and Elimination
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One of the persons disagreeing with the conclusions based on effectiveness was George W Comstock (deceased 2007), a pioneer of preventive therapy in the United States, sho had been the lead investigator, among others, in the Bethel study in Alaska.
In the preventive therapy trials in Alaska, infected persons were prescribed placebo or 12 months of isoniazid. After the trial had been analyzed, the efficacy of preventive therapy was clear-cut. The researchers went back to the study area and provided each person who had been in the trial with one year isoniazid. thus, some trial pariticipant received up to two years of isoniazid in total. Som patients absconded prematurely form the trial but the incidence of tuberculosis could be assess among all trial participants.
Comstock re-analyzed the trial data by looking at the duration participants actually received isoniazid. This analysis shows that the optimum duration lies probably somewhere around nine months.
