While daily antibiotic use is the most effective method for preventing recurrent urinary tract infections in women, daily cranberry pills, daily estrogen therapy and monthly acupuncture treatments also have benefits that may be preferable for some patients, according to a new study by researchers at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed).
The study, published in the Jan. 15 issue of the journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases, said more than half of women suffer from a urinary tract infection at some time in their lives, often requiring antibiotics or other treatments to recover from the infections.
A smaller group of women will have three or more urinary tract infections per year and may require a more pro-active course of treatment to prevent these recurrent infections. The LA BioMed study is the first to use a modeling approach to compare the effectiveness of all of the most commonly used prophylactic measures.
"We described the benefit of each common management option so that women can find an approach to recurrent urinary tract infections that fits their needs," said Loren G. Miller, MD, MPH, LA BioMed infectious disease specialist and lead researcher for the study. "Daily antibiotic usage is the most beneficial by far in preventing recurrent urinary tract infections, but there are benefits to other forms of treatment as well for women who don't want to take antibiotics."
Urinary tract infections cause pain and often require women to miss work or school. They result in more than 6 million outpatient visits and 479,000 hospitalizations per year. The cost to society is estimated to be more than $2.47 billion annually.
