Landmark clinical trial

Kaplan-Meier plot

A landmark clinical trial carried out over 10 years by the Universities of Bristol and Nottingham has shown that oral antibiotics are just as effective as intravenous antibiotics for treating new infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa in people with cystic fibrosis (CF). P aeruginosa is a common bacteria but causes a chronic destructive lung infection in people with CF. It cannot be eradicated unless it is caught in the early stages.

The TORPEDO trial was a multicentre, parallel group, open label, randomised controlled trial which included 286 patients with a first ever or new isolate of P aeruginosa. Patients were randomised to either intravenous antibiotic treatment or oral antibiotics. The primary outcome was eradication of P aerugoinosa at 3 months and the results showed that intravenous antibiotics did not achieve sustained eradication of P aeruginosa in a greater proportion of patients and was more expensive.

Read the full paper here