Comparison of single-dose fosfomycin tromethamine and other antibiotics for lower uncomplicated urinary tract infection in women and asymptomatic bacteriuria in pregnant women: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Introduction: This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated the efficacy and safety of single-dose fosfomycin tromethamine (FT) versus other antibiotic agents in women suffering from lower uncomplicated urinary tract infection (uUTI) and pregnant women with uUTI or asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB).

Methods: MEDLINE, EMBASE and the Cochrane library were searched to identify relevant literature. Twenty-one studies were identified. Nine of the 21 studies enrolled 21 22 patients and were used to compare the clinical resolution of uUTI between non-pregnant and pregnant women. Given that uUTI and ASB are assessed using similar microbiological evaluation methods, all 3103 patients in the identified 21 studies were pooled to determine microbiological resolution between uUTI or ASB patients. Safety outcomes of the treatments were analysed in 15 studies.

Results: The results showed that single-dose FT was comparable with other antibiotic agents in clinical resolution of uUTI (OR 0.89; 95% CI 0.71-1.10; P = 0.41) in non-pregnant (P = 0.32) and pregnant women (P = 0.64). Moreover, single-dose FT was equal to other antibiotics in microbiological resolution, and there was no difference in overall microbiological resolution (OR 1.11; 95% CI 0.92-1.34; P = 0.29) among non-pregnant women with uUTI (P = 0.48), pregnant women with uUTI (P = 0.81) and pregnant women with ASB (P = 0.30). There were no serious fosfomycin-related adverse events and most frequent adverse events were mainly gastrointestinal.

Conclusion: This meta-analysis suggests that single-dose fosfomycin tromethamine produces equivalent clinical outcomes to comparator antibiotics in terms of clinical efficacy and microbiological efficacy. It is therefore clinically effective and safe for women with uUTI and pregnant women with uUTI or ASB, and has higher patient compliance.

Keywords: Asymptomatic bacteriuria; Lower uncomplicated urinary tract infection; Meta-analysis; Pregnancy; Single-dose fosfomycin tromethamine; Women.