A recent study proved that the antibiotic dalbavancin is as effective in curing skin diseases as the current leading product, vancomycin.
Researchers from the Tufts Medical Center concluded that dalbavancin is also effective in curing Staphylococcus aureus, or staph infection, and other bacterial skin diseases. According to the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), anyone can develop staph infection, but those who have chronic diseases are most at risk due to their weakened immune system.
Helen Boucher, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at Tufts Medical Center, and her colleagues performed two clinical trials comparing the effectiveness of vancomycin and dalbavancin.
The tests included a diagnosis of a bacterial skin infection accompanied by cellulitis and wound infection with at least 75 square centimeters of redness. Other criteria were the amount of blood cells and body temperature.
The researchers injected the participants with dalbavancin once a day, while the other group received vancomycin twice daily. After the first trial, the participants received oral linezolid and placebo pills. The results of the tests revealed that those who received dalbavancin and vancomycin both showed improvement of the same rate - the spread of infection and redness stopped between 48 to 72 hours.
"Dalbavancin has a great likelihood of changing our practice in caring for patients with severe skin infections. It will now be possible to treat once a week instead of several times a day and will potentially remove the need for hospital admission and long-term intravenous catheters," Boucher explained in a press release.
Results of this study could change how hospitals use antibiotics to treat skin bacterial infections. In 2011, the CDC declared that antimicrobial diseases became one of the serious health concerns, not only in the United States, but other countries as well.
This study was published in the June 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
