Treatment of bacterial vaginosis: a comparison of oral metronidazole, metronidazole vaginal gel, and clindamycin vaginal cream

Journal of Family Practice, Nov, 1995 by Daron G. Ferris, Mark S. Litaker, Lisa Woodward, Dianne Mathis, Julie Hendrich

We have reported the first comparative trial of the three most common contemporary pharmaceutical agents used for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis. However, there are several limitations of this study. First, although comparable in size to those reported by others,[3-5,14,17] not all subjects completed therapy. Furthermore, although there was no statistically significant difference among cure rates for the three pharmaceutical agents, the possibility of a beta error exists because of the small sample size. The power of this study to detect a small to moderate effect at [alpha]=.05 was approximately 40%. Finally, this investigation did not consider long-term cure rates reported by other authors.[3-5,14,17] It would generally be expected that longer duration of follow-up testing would correspond with increasing failure rates. Long-term failure rates have been reported previously for all three medications.[3-5,14,17]

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by research grant No. 22317 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholars Program, Curatek Pharmaceuticals, Microprobe Corporation, and the Upjohn Company.

Special thanks to Elizabeth Crans and Tracey Barton for manuscript preparation assistance.

[Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

References