There's no good way to manage itchy, painful, nasty chronic vaginal yeast infections, so a group of researchers tried fluconazole (Diflucan), a pill that kills yeast, to see if it could help women long term.

What the researchers wanted to know: Does taking fluconazole weekly prevent yeast infections in women who get them all the time?

What they did: A group of 422 women who had a severe yeast infection and had had at least four others in the previous year were given flucanozole for several days to clear up the infection. They all knew what they were getting; this step was just to get them ready for the rest of the study. After two weeks, 387 women's yeast infections had cleared up, and they were randomly assigned to take either fluconazole or placebo every week for six months, while they visited monthly for evaluations. They came back again at nine and 12 months.

What they found: Women did better while they were on the fluconazole; after six months, 91 percent of them hadn't had another yeast infection, compared with only 36 percent of the placebo women. After treatment ended at six months, the results were more mixed; the women who stopped taking fluconazole had many more yeast infections than the women who'd been on placebo, but by the end of the year, 43 percent of women who'd been on fluconazole were cured compared with only 22 percent of women who'd taken the placebo.

What the study means to you: Weekly fluconazole could help the small number of women who have chronic, recurring vaginal yeast infections, but it probably won't cure most of them.

Caveats: Pfizer, which makes Diflucan, has paid many of the authors for lecture fees and funded the research.

Find out more: Vulvovaginitis, including vaginal yeast infections, including an anatomical diagram and Fluconazole from the National Library of Medicine

Read the article: Sobel, J.D., et al. "Maintenance Fluconazole Therapy for Recurrent Vulvovaginal Candidiasis." New England Journal of Medicine. Aug. 26, 2004, Vol. 351, No. 9, pp. 876-883.

Abstract online: http://content.nejm.org