Lower respiratory tract infections remain one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Increasing rates of antibiotic resistance and newer, more pervasive pneumonia-causative pathogens contribute to this statistic. Currently available macrolide antibiotics for the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia are slowly losing effectiveness, resulting in the need to develop newer drugs to fight resistant infections. In this study, we compare the safety and efficacy of a common macrolide, clarithromycin, to a new ketolide, cethromycin.
The purpose of this study is to compare the efficacy and safety of cethromycin to clarithromycin for the treatment of mild to moderate community-acquired pneumonia (CAP).