Monday, February 25, 2019

Effect of prolonged antibiotic treatment on cognition in patients with Lyme borreliosis.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30796143

Neurology. 2019 Feb 22. pii: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000007186. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000007186. [Epub ahead of print]

Effect of prolonged antibiotic treatment on cognition in patients with Lyme borreliosis.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

To investigate whether longer-term antibiotic treatment improves cognitive performance in patients with persistent symptoms attributed to Lyme borreliosis.

METHODS:

Data were collected during the Persistent Lyme Empiric Antibiotic Study Europe (PLEASE) trial, a randomized, placebo-controlled study. Study participants passed performance-validity testing (measure for detecting suboptimal effort) and had persistent symptoms attributed to Lyme borreliosis. All patients received a 2-week open-label regimen of intravenous ceftriaxone before the 12-week blinded oral regimen (doxycycline, clarithromycin/hydroxychloroquine, or placebo). Cognitive performance was assessed at baseline and after 14, 26, and 40 weeks with neuropsychological tests covering the cognitive domains of episodic memory, attention/working memory, verbal fluency, speed of information processing, and executive function.

RESULTS:

Baseline characteristics of patients enrolled (n = 239) were comparable in all treatment groups. After 14 weeks, performance on none of the cognitive domains differed significantly between the treatment arms (p = 0.49-0.82). At follow-up, no additional treatment effect (p= 0.35-0.98) or difference between groups (p = 0.37-0.93) was found at any time point. Patients performed significantly better in several cognitive domains at weeks 14, 26, and 40 compared to baseline, but this was not specific to a treatment group.

CONCLUSIONS:

A 2-week treatment with ceftriaxone followed by a 12-week regimen of doxycycline or clarithromycin/hydroxychloroquine did not lead to better cognitive performance compared to a 2-week regimen of ceftriaxone in patients with Lyme disease-attributed persistent symptoms.

CLINICALTRIALSGOV IDENTIFIER:

NCT01207739.

CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE:

This study provides Class II evidence that longer-term antibiotics in patients with borreliosis-attributed persistent symptoms does not increase cognitive performance compared to shorter-term antibiotics.

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