Objectives: Eravacycline is a novel, fully-synthetic tetracycline approved by the FDA for treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections in August 2018. This study sought to characterise early clinical experience with this novel antibiotic.
Methods: Eravacycline utilisation for 66 patients was retrospectively evaluated.
Results: Eravacycline was used as monotherapy in 62.1% of cases. Mean duration of therapy was 13.1 ± 9.9 days. The majority (68.2%) of treatment was for off-label indications, including 34.8% for pulmonary and 28.8% for skin/soft tissue infections. A number of difficult-to-treat organisms were encountered: 50% of identified Gram-negative pathogens were resistant to carbapenems in vitro; and 48% of identified Gram-positive pathogens were resistant to vancomycin in vitro. The patient population had a high illness acuity, with 42.4% requiring ICU admission, 59.1% having ≥2 co-morbidities and 33.3% having ≥3 co-morbidities. Nevertheless, 95.5% experienced clinical improvement, with 86.4% achieving full infection resolution following eravacycline. Three patients who did not experience clinical improvement had an intra-abdominal source of infection without adequate source control. The remaining six who did not experience full infection resolution died from unrelated non-infectious causes during hospital admission. Adverse events were uncommon (4.5%), limited to nausea/vomiting, and not leading to eravacycline discontinuation. Although two patients had a history of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), no patients developed CDI while receiving eravacycline.
Conclusion: These results illustrate the potential versatility of eravacycline with a broad activity spectrum, good safety and tolerability profile, flexibility for use in patients with renal injury or antibiotic allergies, and positive clinical outcomes in this real-world cohort.
Keywords: Clostridioides difficile; Eravacycline; Off-label indication.
Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Ltd.