Background: Neonatal sepsis is a major determinant of neonatal mortality. There is a scarcity of evidence-based guidelines for the duration of antibiotics in culture-positive sepsis.
Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of 10- and 14-day antibiotic therapies in the management of culture-positive neonatal sepsis.
Methods: This randomized controlled trial was conducted in the neonatal intensive care unit of a tertiary care center among the neonates suffering from culture-positive sepsis (with signs of clinical remission on day 9 of antibiotic) between January 2023 and May 2023. Newborns with major congenital anomaly, deep-seated infections, multi-organ dysfunction, associated fungal infections/infection by multiple organisms and severe birth asphyxia were excluded. Two hundred and thirty-four newborns were randomized into two groups-study (received 10 days of antibiotics) and control (received 14 days of antibiotics). Treatment failure, hospital stay and adverse effects were compared between the two groups. p < 0.05 was taken as the limit of statistical significance.
Results: Median [interquartile range (IQR)] birth weight and gestational age of the study population (53.8% boys) were 2.424 kg (IQR: 2.183-2.695) and 37.3 weeks (IQR: 35.5-38.1), respectively. Acinetobacter was the most commonly isolated species (56, 23.9%). The baseline characteristics of both groups were almost similar. Treatment failure was similar in the study and control groups (3.8% vs. 1.7%, p = 0.40), with a shorter hospital stay [median (IQR): 14 (13-16) vs. 18 (17-19) days, p < 0.001].
Conclusion: Ten-day antibiotic therapy was comparable with 14-day antibiotic therapy in efficacy, with a shorter duration of hospital stay and without any significant increase in adverse effects.
Keywords: BacT/Alert; bacterimia; newborn; septicemia.
Neonatal sepsis is a major cause of neonatal mortality in developing countries like India. Textbooks recommend 14-day antibiotic treatment for culture-positive neonatal sepsis. However, these guidelines are not strictly evidence based. Prolonged antibiotic treatment might be associated with drug resistance, secondary infections and organ damage. A shorter course of antibiotic, if found effective, would be beneficial especially in the resource-constrained settings like India. Hence, this study was undertaken to compare a shorter duration antibiotic treatment (10 days) with the conventional 14-day antibiotic therapy. Two hundred and thirty-four newborns with culture-positive sepsis were randomized into the study group (received 10 days of antibiotics) and the control group (received 14 days of antibiotics). Socio-demographic characters, clinical and laboratory features and bacteriological profile of both the groups were recorded. Both the groups were comparable in baseline features. Two-thirds of them were suffering from Gram-negative sepsis, Acinetobacter being the most commonly isolated organism. Incidence of treatment failure was similar in the study and control groups. Duration of hospital stay was significantly lower in the study group than in the control group. This observation was true irrespective of gestational age and type of organisms. There were no significant differences in adverse effects between the groups. However, there are certain limitations in the study, and hence, multi-centric research should be undertaken before making generalized recommendations of practising short duration of antibiotics.
© The Author(s) [2023]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.