Guide Regarding Choice of Second‐line Therapy to Obtain a High Cumulative Cure Rate

Abstract

Manfredi et al. [1] report in this issue of Helicobacter that, in their experience, in a large population, more than 95% of Helicobacter pylori infections were eradicated by the empiric strategy of administrating sequential therapy as the first-line therapy followed by a 10-day fluoroquinolone-containing triple therapy. The eradication rate was 92.6% with sequential therapy but only 75% with the second-line fluoroquinolone triple therapy yielding the cumulative result of 97.8% per-protocol eradication. Theirs is one of a few studies looking at overall community results rather than separately focusing on the results of first and second-line therapy [2,3]. They go on to suggest that fluoroquinolone triple therapy might be an excellent recue to eradicate H. pylori infection in only two rounds [1].