Treatment of bacteremia by vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus with daptomycin versus linezolid: a systematic review and meta-analyses

Introduction: Second-line drugs such as linezolid and daptomycin are used for treatment of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) infections. Objective: A systematic review to evaluate treatment of VRE bacteremia with linezolid versus daptomycin. Methods: A search was done in the databases of Pubmed, Embase, Scopus, ScienceDirect, CENTRAL, Lilacs and Google Scholar to identify studies comparing treatment with daptomycin or linezolid of patients infected by VRE up to July 2015. Result: Only 15 studies were included of a total of 1.307 records. There were no differences between daptomycin and linezolid with respect to mortality at 30 days. Microbiological cure was better with daptomycin (OR: 0.64; 95 % CI: 0.45-0.92), whereas there was no difference between the two antibiotics with respect to clinical cure, need to ICU admission, and the occurrence of adverse effects such as thrombocytopenia, neutropenia and renal failure. Conclusions: No significant differences were observed between daptomycin and linezolid in reference to mortality of patients infected with VRE, although daptomycin treatment produced a faster microbiological cure.