Clofazimine, sold under the brand name Lamprene, is a medication used together with rifampicin and dapsone to treat leprosy. It is specifically used for multibacillary (MB) leprosy and erythema nodosum leprosum, and its discovery greatly improved the overall efficiency of the treatment. Evidence is insufficient to support its use in other conditions, though a retrospective study found it 95% effective in the treatment of Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) when administered together with a macrolide and ethambutol, as well as the drugs amikacin and clarithromycin. However, in the United States,
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Clofazimine, sold under the brand name Lamprene, is a medication used together with rifampicin and dapsone to treat leprosy. It is specifically used for multibacillary (MB) leprosy and erythema nodosum leprosum, and its discovery greatly improved the overall efficiency of the treatment. Evidence is insufficient to support its use in other conditions, though a retrospective study found it 95% effective in the treatment of Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) when administered together with a macrolide and ethambutol, as well as the drugs amikacin and clarithromycin. However, in the United States, clofazimine is currently considered an orphan drug, is unavailable in pharmacies, and its use in the treatment of MAC is overseen by the Food and Drug Administration. It is taken orally.
Common side effects include abdominal pain, diarrhea, itchiness, dry skin, and change in skin color. It can also cause swelling of the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, increased blood sugar, and sensitivity to the sun. It is unclear if use during pregnancy is safe. Clofazimine is a phenazine dye and is believed to work by interfering with DNA.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).