A new drug combination has been found to be more effective, especially against persistent, drug-resistant infections, according to an international study led by a Rutgers scientist comparing new and older treatments for complicated urinary tract infections.Researchers from the ALLIUM Phase 3 clinical trial reported their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), demonstrating that cefepime and enmetazobactam were more successful than the conventional regimen of piperacillin and tazobactam in treating complicated urinary tract infections and acute pyelonephritis (AP), a bacterial infection that causes kidney inflammation.When urinary tract infections are accompanied by risk factors that raise the possibility of antibiotic therapy failing, such as fevers, sepsis, urinary obstruction, or catheters, they are referred to as complicated urinary tract infections.

“This new antibiotic was superior to the standard-of-care therapy,” said Keith Kaye, chief of the Division of Allergy, Immunology and Infectious Diseases and a professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.”It represents an exciting option for treatment,” said Kaye, the principal investigator of the study and lead author on the publication. The extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) infections, so named after an enzyme the bacteria produce, are a group of frequently dangerous bacterial illnesses caused by pathogens.