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Successful Eradication of Helicobacter pylori with 5-Day Concomitant Treatment

Background. Untreated Helicobacter pylori is associated with gastrointestinal conditions including peptic ulcer disease, chronic gastritis, and gastric cancer. The ACG guidelines presently call for triple therapy consisting of a PPI, clarithromycin, and amoxicillin or metronidazole for 14 days. The ACG recommends this treatment as a first-line therapy despite the recognition of growing resistance to clarithromycin, presently upwards of 15-20%. Aims. Studied was the effectiveness of a 5-day concomitant eradication protocol. Methods. This was a retrospective study of 77 H. pylori infected, treatment naïve patients, prescribed a 5-day concomitant therapy containing levofloxacin 500 mg b.i.d., amoxicillin 1 gm b.i.d., tinidazole 500 mg b.i.d., and esomeprazole 40 mg b.i.d. in our New Jersey community setting. Eradication was confirmed with C13 urea breath test. Results. In our intention-to-treat analysis of 65 patients, 54 patients (83.03%) achieved eradication confirmed by C13 urea breath testing. Conclusions. Highly efficacious eradication rates of 80-90% can be achieved with 5-day concomitant treatment (levofloxacin, esomeprazole, tinidazole, and amoxicillin) in a community practice. Our treatment protocol achieves comparable, if not better, clearance rates as compared to agents specified in the ACG consensus guidelines recommending a longer 10–14-day treatment. Additionally, our protocol resulted in better patient compliance, was more cost-effective, shorter, and was well-tolerated compared even to newer treatments, like rifabutin. Thus, these results successfully demonstrate that this 5-day b.i.d. therapy, originally identified over 20 years ago, continues to be an effective choice option and is likely superior as it has comparable clearance rates to traditional 10–14-day therapy.