The study, named COBRA, was designed to compare the efficacy and safety of telithromycin (Ketek) to other standard, single agent antibiotics, such as B-lactams, cephalosporins, macrolides, and quinolones, in outpatients with mild to moderate community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in areas with a high prevalence of penicillin and erythromycin-resistant S. pneumoniae isolates.
In the subgroup of patients with documented pneumococcal CAP, clinical cure rates were 90.7% for telithromycin versus 76.3% for the comparator antibiotics group. Both treatments were similarly well tolerated.
“The clinical cure rates achieved in this study support the use of telithromycin as first line oral therapy for patients with (mild to moderate) community-acquired pneumonia and therefore may have important implications for decision making in everyday clinical practice,” said professor C Mayaud from the Service de Pneumologie/Reanimation Respiratoire of Hopital Tenon in Paris, France.