The trial, led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was run in partnership with the NIAID-funded Drug Resistance Leadership Group and enrolled patients at eight US medical centers, all both are part of the NIAID Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit. It sought to determine whether a shorter antibiotic treatment strategy was more effective than a typical 10-day strategy for treating children younger than 6 years of age with CAP.
“It is important that we minimize unnecessary antibiotic use, to eliminate the risk of antibiotic side effects and slow progression,” says first author Derek Williams, MD, Chief of Pediatrics. development of drug resistance, a global public health threat. Hospital Medicine at Children’s Hospital Monroe Carell Jr. at Vanderbilt.
“Sometimes this means not using antibiotics at all. In other cases, when antibiotics are imperative, this means choosing the right antibiotic, at the right dose, and for just the right duration,” he said. the time it takes to effectively treat the infection,” he said.
Previous studies have shown that antibiotic treatment shorter than 10 days can have a beneficial effect on pneumonia, but the studies have not looked at all of the possible negative effects from antibiotics. potential harm or harmful effects of unnecessary antibiotic use.
“SCOUT-CAP is the first clinical trial to use this particularly innovative trial design that takes into account both response to therapy and its potential side effects,” said corresponding author Buddy Creech, said MD, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program and principal investigator of the Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit.
“Using this approach in future trials may allow us to optimize therapy for certain infectious diseases in children and adults,” he said.
Researchers studied 380 children 6 months to under 6 years of age who were diagnosed with CAP and prescribed outpatient antibiotic treatment. In the randomized trial, a 5-day course of antibiotics resulted in a similar response to the 10-day strategy. Because the likelihood of treatment success and adverse event profiles were similar between groups, the investigators concluded that short-term therapy was superior to standard therapy. In addition, a shorter antibiotic treatment strategy resulted in a significantly lower amount of antibiotic resistance genes in that group.
“These data can be immediately applied by clinicians, and we hope this study will help shift the model of childhood pneumonia to conservative treatments,” Williams said. more, leading to safer and more effective care”.
This project was funded in part with funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Vaccine Evaluation and Treatment Unit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (HHSN272201300023I).
Source: Eurekalert
