Shortened antibiotic therapy possible through the body's own infection markers?

Use endogenous infection markers to shorten use of antibiotics

The discovery of antibiotics is one of the most important developments in the history of medicine, because they can be used to cure formerly life-threatening infections. However, treatment with the drugs is often tedious. Researchers now report that antibiotic therapy can be shortened with an endogenous infection marker.

Reduce side effects

Although antibiotics help combat bacterial infectious diseases and thereby prevent the spread of the pathogens, experts have repeatedly pointed out that such drugs are used less frequently and correctly. Finally, antibiotics often cause serious side effects. However, researchers now report that such side effects and the duration of treatment can be reduced.

Antibiotics are used, among other things, for severe respiratory infections. Researchers now report that the treatment with such drugs can be shortened by an endogenous infection marker. (Image: auremar / fotolia.com)

Shorten the use of antibiotics

As reported by researchers from the University of Basel and the Cantonal Hospital Aarau in a communication, the use of antibiotics in infections with the body's own infection marker procalcitonin controlled.

The antibiotic therapy is shortened, but also their side effects and mortality decrease.

This was demonstrated in a meta-analysis of more than 6,700 international data from patients with respiratory infections.

The results have now been published in the journal "The Lancet Infectious Diseases".

In healthy little or no detectable

Procalcitonin is the precursor of a thyroid hormone that is barely or not detectable in healthy people. But if it comes in the body to a bacterial inflammation, the substance procalcitonin in the blood suddenly rises.

This mechanism can be used by physicians in the diagnosis of infectious diseases - because antibiotic treatment is known to be useful only for bacterial infections.

This is important for respiratory tract infections, for example, as it is often difficult to differentiate between bacterial and viral infections.

It is already known that the use of procalcitonin can shorten antibiotic therapy by around 30 percent.

In various randomized studies - among others at the University of Basel - the doctors were given a recommendation on the basis of the procalcitonin value as to whether antibiotics are necessary or whether they can be stopped.

This biomarker strategy was then compared to a control group that decided on antibiotic use according to purely clinical criteria.

Against resistance formation

For the study, 26 research groups from 12 countries provided and analyzed the data of 6,708 patients - in line with the global trend of data sharing, which can better characterize individual patient populations.

The meta-analysis under the direction of Prof. Dr. med. Philipp Schuetz from the Department of Clinical Research of the University and University Hospital Basel and the Cantonal Hospital Aarau shows that the infection marker procalcitonin decreases mortality in patients with respiratory tract infections.

A reduction in relative mortality after 30 days from 14% (from 10% to 8.6%) and a 25% reduction in antibiotic deficiencies (from 22.1% to 16.3%).

"These results also give hope that the global trend of antibiotic resistance formation can be counteracted," said Schuetz.

And that would indeed be a great advantage. After all, such resistances must be resolutely combated as effective antibiotics become increasingly scarce globally. (Ad)