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The following is a summary of “Comparative effectiveness and safety of six antibiotics in treating MRSA infections: A network meta-analysis,” published in the September 2024 issue of Infectious Diseases by Ju et al.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to compare the effectiveness of linezolid, teicoplanin, daptomycin, tigecycline, and ceftaroline fosamil against vancomycin in treating MRSA-related diseases, handling the gaps in research on antibiotic therapy for MRSA infections.
They systematically searched databases, with PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library, up to August 22, 2023. All eligible randomized controlled trials of the 6 antibiotics were included in the network meta-analysis (NMA) to compare their efficacy and safety across various MRSA-related diseases. Odds ratio (OR) was used for categorical data, while mean difference (SMD) was used for continuous data. Surface under the cumulative ranking (SUCRA) was used to assess the incidence rate.
The results showed that daptomycin was the most effective treatment (73.0%) for bloodstream infections, according to SUCRA. In pulmonary and skin/soft tissue infections, linezolid outshined other antibiotics’ effectiveness (90.6% and 86.3%) and microbial death rates (93.3% and 93.1%). Vancomycin had lower adverse reactions than teicoplanin, including less hepatotoxicity than linezolid and tigecycline. Linezolid had a higher risk of thrombocytopenia but a reduced risk of nephrotoxicity than others. Vancomycin was less effective in microbial death rates than linezolid across different infections.
They concluded that linezolid may be a preferable choice for treating MRSA-related diseases in pulmonary infections and skin/soft tissue infections and warranted caution in the association of linezolid with thrombocytopenia.
Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971224001802
