The best research achievements of University of Ljubljana 2023

As part of the University Week, the 10 most excellent research achievements of UL researchers in 2023 were announced. Among them is the co-authorship of Assoc. prof. dr. Rok Blagus, a colleague at IBMI, namely on an article in the field of medicine:

Shorter antibiotic treatment of early Lyme disease: a randomized open-label non-inferiority trial

Authors: Assoc. dr. Daša Stupica, Ph.D. med., Stefan Collinet-Adler, MD, MPH, Assoc. prof. dr. Rok Blagus, Anja Gomišček, known. barrel. dr. Tjaša Cerar Kišek, prof. dr. Eva Ružić-Sabljić, Maša Velušček

Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana

Doxycycline for 10 days is the recommended first-line treatment for erythema migrans (EM), the most common form of Lyme disease. In order to find a shorter effective treatment and reduce the potentially harmful and excessive use of antibiotics, researchers from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ljubljana planned to evaluate whether a 7-day treatment with oral doxycycline is non-inferior to a 14-day treatment in adult patients with solitary EM.

From July 2017 to October 2018, 300 patients with solitary EM were enrolled in a randomized, open-label, non-inferiority clinical trial. Half of the patients received oral doxycycline 100 mg every 12 hours for 7 days and the other half for 14 days. Five (3%) of 147 patients treated for 7 days and 3 (2%) of 147 treated for 14 days had treatment failure at the 2-month follow-up examination as evidenced by persistence of erythema (difference 1.4% ; upper bound of the one-sided 95% confidence interval 5.2%, which is less than the prespecified non-inferiority limit (6%); p=0.64). No patient developed new clinical signs of Lyme disease during the 12-month follow-up, and none had re-isolation of Borrelia from the skin after treatment. Two (1%) of 150 patients treated for 7 days and one (1%) of 150 patients treated for 14 days discontinued antibiotic treatment due to adverse events.

Their results support the prescription of oral doxycycline for 7 days for the treatment of adult patients with solitary EM in Europe, allowing for lower antibiotic exposure than currently recommended.