Wyeth says new antibiotic options are “welcome”

Wyeth has said that new antibiotic treatments like Tygacil are needed to treat “atypical” microbes.

The claim comes following the results of two clinical studies in 846 patients hospitalised with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Subjects were treated with either Wyeth’s Tygacil or levofloxacin, the Ortho-McNeil antibiotic.

During the studies, levofloxacin cured CAP in 86.3 per cent of patients and Tygacil cured 89.7 per cent, which is not a statistically significant difference. However, it means that Tygacil could provide an alternative antibiotic therapy.

Thomas File, chief of infectious disease services for Summa Health System in Akron, Ohio, remarked: “The need for a new option is especially critical as many strains of the most common bacteria causing CAP are now resistant to certain antibiotics and can complicate treatment.”

David Wu, assistant vice president of clinical affairs and global medical affairs at Wyeth added that the data produced by the studies was “especially notable”, with the hope being that Tygacil could “provide the medical community with another treatment option”.

Tygacil has been approved in the EU for the treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections and complicated skin infections.

The drug was launched in the UK in July, when Dr Mark Palazzo, chief of service for critical care medicine at Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust said Tygacil could lessen the need for expensive antibiotic combinations to fight resistant bacterial infections.