WITHDRAWN: Drugs for treating giardiasis

There can be a high rate of recurrence of disease after initial drug treatment for giardiasis. These drugs also have a range of adverse effects.

The objective of this review was to assess the effects of drug treatments for giardiasis.

We searched the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group Specialized Register, CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Current Contents, and reference lists of articles.

Randomised and quasi-randomised trials of drug therapy for giardiasis compared with placebo or another drug.

Two reviewers independently assessed trial quality and extracted data.

Thirty-four trials were included. Only one trial was without serious methodological flaws. Compared with placebo, drug treatment was associated with an improved cure rate (odds ratio 11.51, 95% confidence interval 2.29 to 57.98). Metronidazole treatment longer than three days had a better parasitological cure rate than other long treatment courses (odds ratio 2.41, 95% confidence interval 1.31 to 4.44), but there was significant heterogeneity between the trials. Available evidence has not detected a difference in cure between single dose therapy and longer treatment courses (odds ratio 0.33, 95% confidence interval 0.08 to 1.34). Within the single dose regimens, the available evidence did not demonstrate a difference in parasitological cure rate between tinidazole and other short therapies (odds ratio 3.39, 95% confidence interval 0.95 to 12.04), but had a higher clinical cure rate (odds ratio 5.33, 95% 2.66 to 10.67).

A single dose of tinidazole appears to give the highest clinical cure rate for giardiasis with relatively few adverse effects.