New antibiotic cefpodoxime for bladder infection has disappointing results.

Health Day (2/8, Mann) reports, "New antibiotics are needed to help treat bladder infections, but the drug cefpodoxime, once thought promising, doesn't appear to be up to the task," according to a study published Feb. 8 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study "included 300 women aged 18 to 55 with uncomplicated bladder infections" who "received either 250 milligrams (mg) of ciprofloxacin orally twice a day for three days or 100 mg of cefpodoxime proxetil orally twice a day for three days." Dr. Thomas Hooton, a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said, "We do have antibiotics to treat bladder infections, but due to increasing rates of resistance, we wanted to see if this other drug [cefpodoxime] was comparable to the gold standard, but it wasn't."