Moxifloxacin monotherapy for treatment of complicated intra‐abdominal infections: a meta‐analysis of randomised controlled trials

Summary To evaluate the efficacy and safety of moxifloxacin monotherapy for treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections. PubMed, EMBASE, Science Direct, ClinicalTrials.gov and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials were searched to retrieve randomised controlled trials (RCTs) compared moxifloxacin monotherapy with other antibiotics in the treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections from January 1999 to July 2011. A meta-analysis of all included randomised controlled trials was performed. Four randomised controlled trials including a total of 2444 patients with complicated intra-abdominal infections were included for meta-analysis. The results of the meta-analysis indicated that the moxifloxacin was associated with similar clinical cure rate (four RCTs, 1934 patients, OR = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.61, 1.04, p = 0.09), bacteriological success rates (four RCTs, 1484 patients, OR = 0.79, 95% CI: 0.59, 1.05, p = 0.11) and mortality (four RCTs, 2227 patients, OR = 0.91, 95% CI: 0.45, 1.83, p = 0.79) compared with the control group. The overall incidence of adverse events of moxifloxacin was significantly higher than that in the control group (three RCTs, 1367 patients, OR = 1.33, 95% CI: 1.07, 1.63, p = 0.008), although the incidence of drug-related adverse events (three RCTs, 1601 patients, OR = 1.13, 95% CI: 0.69, 1.85, p = 0.63) and serious adverse events (three RCTs, 1815 patients, OR = 1.23, 95% CI: 0.59, 2.60, p = 0.58) were similar between the compared treatment groups. Moxifloxacin is an effective and relatively safe option for the treatment of patients with intra-abdominal infections. Moxifloxacin monotherapy has similar efficacy to combination therapy.