A plain language summary of how lefamulin alone can be used to treat pneumonia caught outside of the hospital due to common bacterial causes, including drug-resistant bacteria

WHAT IS THIS SUMMARY ABOUT? Bacterial pneumonia is an infection of the lung caused by bacteria that is potentially deadly, costly, and affects millions of people worldwide every year. Treatment is becoming more challenging—many current treatments no longer work well because some strains of bacteria that cause pneumonia have become resistant to current antibiotics. Many of the antibiotics that do still work have undesirable side effects. Therefore, new antibiotics that work differently are needed to treat bacterial pneumonia. Lefamulin (brand name, Xenleta(®)) is an antibiotic that was approved to treat bacterial pneumonia caught outside a hospital (also called community-acquired bacterial pneumonia, or CABP) based on results of two clinical studies. In both studies, participants started treatment with lefamulin before the type of bacteria causing the infection was known. Lefamulin was well tolerated and worked well in 5 to 7 days to kill the bacteria causing the infection and to improve symptoms in almost all participants with CABP. WHAT WERE THE RESULTS? After the studies were completed, the researchers looked back at what kinds of bacteria were identified from the study participants. Lefamulin worked well to kill bacteria and to improve CABP symptoms for most kinds of infecting bacteria, including bacteria resistant to many current antibiotics. WHAT DO THE RESULTS MEAN? These results suggest that lefamulin, by itself, provides a much-needed treatment option for CABP that covers most of the key bacteria causing this infection.