Doxycycline vs. levofloxacin in the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) affects 5-10 million adults annually in the United States with approximately 1.1 million hospitalizations. Current guidelines recommend fluoroquinolones as monotherapy for treatment of CAP in general medical wards and doxycycline monotherapy for outpatient therapy only. Fluoroquinolones are expensive and development of bacterial resistance to them has become a concern. Therefore, we studied whether doxycycline is as efficacious as levofloxacin in treatment of CAP in general medical wards.

In this prospective double-blinded trial, non-pregnant adults with clinical and radiological evidence of pneumonia requiring hospitalization were enrolled. Patients who were septic, hypoxic requiring intubations, nursing home residents, diagnosed with severe hepatic or renal dysfunction, recently hospitalized or immunocompromised were excluded from the study. Subjects were randomly assigned to either i.v. levofloxacin 500 mg daily or doxycycline 100 mg twice daily. After discharge, patients were followed for 2 months.

There were 30 patients in the levofloxacin group and 35 patients in the doxycycline group. Groups were comparable in both clinical and laboratory profiles. Additionally, efficacy of treatment was not significantly different between the two groups (P = 0.844). Length of stay was 5.7 +/- 2.05 days in the levofloxacin group and 4.0 +/- 1.82 days in the doxycycline group (P < 0.0012). Failure rate was similar in both groups (P = 0.893). Total antibiotic cost was $122.07 +/- 15.84 for levofloxacin and $64.98 +/- 24.4 for doxycycline (P < 0.0001).

Our study supports doxycycline as an effective and economical alternative therapy for levofloxacin in the empirical treatment of CAP in general medical wards.