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Antibiotic heads off new events
DALLAS-If MI patients have antibodies to Chlamydia pneumoniae, antibiotics may forestall another cardiac event.
Among 213 patients studied by Dr. Sandeep Gupta’s group at St. George’s Hospital in London, a single course of azithromycin (Zithromax, Pfizer) for three or six days dropped 40 high-titer patients’ rate of subsequent MIs, unstable angina, PTCA, and CABG to levels no different from those in 59 patients who were C. pneumoniae-seronegative. Treated patients also had a decrease in antibody titers.
But 40 untreated patients with the highest C. pneumoniae antibody titers had a fourfold increase in adverse subsequent events.
For 74 additional patients with intermediate C. pneumoniae titers, none of whom got azithromycin, the rate of subsequent cardiac events was twice that of seronegative patients, the researchers reported in Circulation.
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