J&J's doripenem fares well vs NP and VAP

US health care major Johnson & Johnson's investigational antibiotic doripenem was found to clinically cure 81% of patients with nosocomial pneumonia, and 68% of people with ventilator-associated pneumonia, according to new data presented at the 47th annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, held in Chicago, USA.

The agent belongs to a class of antibacterial agents called carbapenems, which are useful in treating serious, life-threatening infections caused by Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. Doripenem is licensed from Japanese drugmaker Shionogi, which launched the product on the domestic market in September 2005. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), two million Americans develop hospital-acquired infections each year, with approximately 90,000 diying as a result. Around 70% of these infections are resistant to at least one antibiotic.

Data discussed in an oral presentation demonstrated that 500mg of doripenem administered intravenously every eight hours was as effective and well-tolerated as the standard combination of 4.5g of piperacillin/tazobactam administered intravenously every six hours in patients with NP. In clinically-evaluable patients, doripenem demonstrated an 81.3% clinical cure rate versus 79.8% seen with the combination of piperacillin/tazobactam.