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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 7, 2015; 21(21): 6698-6705
Published online Jun 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i21.6698
Published online Jun 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i21.6698
Low efficacy of levofloxacin-doxycycline-based third-line triple therapy for Helicobacter pylori eradication in Italy
Omero Alessandro Paoluzi, Giovanna Del Vecchio Blanco, Emanuela Visconti, Manuela Coppola, Francesco Pallone, Gastroenterology Unit, Department of Internal Medicine, University Tor Vergata, 00133 Roma, Italy
Carla Fontana, Marco Favaro, Department of Experimental Medicine and Surgery, University Tor Vergata, 00133 Roma, Italy
Author contributions: Paoluzi OA and Del Vecchio Blanco G contributed equally to this work; Visconti E and Coppola M conducted clinical activities; Fontana C and Favaro M performed microbiology assessments; Pallone F contributed to write the paper.
Informed consent: All study participants or their legal guardian provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Omero Alessandro Paoluzi, MD, Gastroenterology Unit, Department of Internal Medicine, University Tor Vergata, Viale Oxford 81, 00133 Roma, Italy. omeroalessandro.paoluzi@ptvonline.it
Telephone: +39-6-20900969 Fax: +39-6-20903738
Received: December 18, 2014
Peer-review started: December 18, 2014
First decision: January 8, 2015
Revised: January 23, 2015
Accepted: February 13, 2015
Article in press: February 13, 2015
Published online: June 7, 2015
Processing time: 175 Days and 6.7 Hours
Peer-review started: December 18, 2014
First decision: January 8, 2015
Revised: January 23, 2015
Accepted: February 13, 2015
Article in press: February 13, 2015
Published online: June 7, 2015
Processing time: 175 Days and 6.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip:Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy should be based on a culture sensitivity test or include antibiotics not already used by patients who failed to respond to two or more previous attempts. Third-line levofloxacin-based triple therapy was demonstrated to be effective in such kind of patients. In the present study, a third-line levofloxacin-doxycycline triple therapy, associated or not with probiotics, was able to eradicate H. pylori infection in about 50% of patients. The low eradication rate achieved by the study regimen was probably due to levofloxacin resistance. Further studies on larger series are needed to confirm the efficacy of levofloxacin-containing regimens in Italy.