A Henry Ford Hospital study has found that a drug approved just two years ago for treating bacterial infections may hold promise for treating the potentially fatal MRSA pneumonia. Researchers found that patients treated with the antibiotic ceftaroline fosamil, or CPT-F, had a lower mortality rate after 28 days than the mortality rate seen in patients treated with vancomycin, the most common drug therapy for MRSA pneumonia.

In the retrospective study, 33 of 38 patients responded well to treatments of CPT-F and were discharged from the hospital after the infection cleared. Of the five patients who died, three were attributed to other serious medical conditions. The mortality rate for patients treated with vancomycin has been reported to be as high as 32 percent after 28 days. In the Henry Ford study, the mortality rate for the CPT-F treated population was 13 percent. The study is being presented Wednesday at the annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy meeting in Denver.

"Many things fall under the umbrella of proper and appropriate MRSA pneumonia treatment, and these results present a possible benefit with the use of CPT-F," says Samia Arshad, a Henry Ford Infectious Diseases epidemiologist and the study's lead author. "It is critical for us to find alternative drug therapies to improve patient outcomes." Further research is needed to test the efficacy of CPT-F on a larger patient population as CPT-F offers doctors another viable option for treating patients with MRSA pneumonia.