Comparative Effectiveness of Different Oral Antibiotics Regimens for Treatment of Urinary Tract Infection in Outpatients: An Analysis of National Representative Claims Database

There are very limited data on the postmarketing outcome comparison of different guideline antibiotic regimens for patients with urinary tract infections (UTIs). We carried out a population-based comparative effectiveness study from year 2000 through 2009, using the administrative data of 2 million patients from the National Health Informatics Project of Taiwan. Treatment failure was defined as either hospitalization or emergency department visits for UTI. Odd ratios were computed using conditional logistic regression models matched on propensity score. We identified 73,675 individuals with UTI, of whom 54,796 (74.4%) received trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX), 4184 (5.7%) received ciprofloxacin, 3142 (4.3%) received levofloxacin, 5984 (8.1%) received ofloxacin, and 5569 (7.6%) received norfloxacin. Compared with TMP-SMX, the composite treatment failure was significantly lowered for norfloxacin in propensity score (PS) matching analyses (OR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.54–0.99). Both norfloxacin (PS-matched OR, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.47–0.98) and ofloxacin (PS-matched OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.49–0.99) had significantly lowered composite treatment failure rate when compared with ciprofloxacin. Subgroup analysis suggested that both norfloxacin and ofloxacin were more effective in female patients without complications (W/O indwelling catheters, W/O bedridden status and W/O spinal cord injury), when compared with either TMP-SMX or ciprofloxacin. Among outpatients receiving oral fluoroquinolone therapy for UTIs, there was evidence of superiority of norfloxacin or ofloxacin over ciprofloxacin or TMP-SMX in terms of treatment failure. Given the observational nature of this study and regional difference in antibiotic resistance patterns, more studies are required to validate our results.