Evidence Hub

Adverse events in healthy individuals and MDR-TB contacts treated with anti-tuberculosis drugs potentially effective for preventing development of MDR-TB: a systematic review

M. Langendam, E. Tiemersma, M. J. van der Werf, A. Sandgren

PLoS ONE, 2013

17 citations

Abstract

A recent systematic review concluded that there is insufficient evidence on the effectiveness to support or reject preventive therapy for treatment of contacts of patients with multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Whether preventive therapy is favorable depends both on the effectiveness and the adverse events of the drugs used. We performed a systematic review to assess adverse events in healthy individuals and MDR-TB contacts treated with anti-tuberculosis drugs potentially effective for preventing development of MDR-TB. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, and other databases (August 2011). Record selection, data extraction, and study quality assessment were done in duplicate. The quality of evidence was assessed using the GRADE approach. Of 6,901 identified references, 20 studies were eligible. Among the 16 studies in healthy volunteers (a total of 87 persons on either levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, ofloxacin, or rifabutin, mostly for 1 week), serious adverse events and treatment discontinuation due to adverse events were rare (<1 and <5%, respectively), but mild adverse events frequently occurred. Due to small sample sizes of the levofloxacin and ofloxacin studies an increased frequency of mild adverse events compared to placebo could not be demonstrated or excluded. For moxifloxacin the comparative results were inconsistent. In four studies describing preventive therapy of MDR-TB contacts, therapy was stopped for 58–100% of the included persons because of the occurrence of…

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a meta-analysis, done in people. Its evidence level is 1 of 5 (Highest · pooled evidence). Pooled evidence from several studies sits at the top of the evidence pyramid.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free