Dalbavancin is a new semisynthetic lipoglycopeptide approved in the United States and Europe for acute bacterial skin and skin and soft tissue infections with potent activity against staphylococci, including methicillin-resistant, heterogeneous vancomycin-intermediate
S. aureus (hVISA), and VISA strains and vancomycin-susceptible enterococci (MIC
90 ≤ 0.12 mg/liter) (
14,
15). The main advantage of this antibiotic is its long half-life (180 to 240 h), which allows a once weekly or biweekly intravenous administration, reducing the use of vascular catheters and saving hospital stays (
16). Bone and joint infections, particularly when the implant is not removed, require at least 6 to 12 weeks of antibiotic treatment according to the majority of current guidelines. A recent unblinded and randomized trial (OVIVA) confirmed that oral antibiotic treatment is as effective as intravenous administration in bone, joint, or metalware-associated infections (
17). The better results with oral antibiotics have been demonstrated with levofloxacin plus rifampin; however, other oral alternatives combined with rifampin have been associated with lower remission rates (
8,
11), in part due to a worse safety profile but also to a reduction in the serum concentration of companion drugs like clindamycin, co-trimoxazole, linezolid, or fusidic acid (
18–21), in contrast to what has been shown with fluoroquinolones (
10). Therefore, more alternatives are needed for the treatment of bone and joint infections (
22). The first conclusion of our study is that dalbavancin is well tolerated, with minor adverse events without any treatment interruption or evidence of nephrotoxicity. Indeed, dalbavancin is a derivative of teicoplanin, and it is significantly less toxic than vancomycin (
23). In line with this, dalbavancin was infused over 30 min, and in only one case, a skin rash was reported after the first dose but did not recur after the subsequent ones. This makes dalbavancin an attractive drug for infusion at home by OPAT (outpatient parenteral antibiotic treatment) systems. About 50% of the cases received dalbavancin once the infection was controlled in order to complete antibiotic treatment, and the success rate was almost 80%. These results support a recent report showing a >90% success rate with dalbavancin as a sequential treatment for infective endocarditis caused by Gram-positive cocci (
24). On the other hand, the success rate among patients that received dalbavancin after failure with a prior antibiotic was >50%, suggesting a role for dalbavancin as a salvage therapy in some cases. The efficacy of dalbavancin in these infections could be partly attributed to its efficacy against biofilms (
25,
26) and its bone diffusion. Dunne et al. (
27) determined the concentrations in synovial fluid and bone after 14 days of 1,000 mg of dalbavancin to be 14 mg/liter and 4 μg/g, respectively, both above the MIC
90 of dalbavancin for staphylococci and enterococci. This result suggests that a biweekly regimen is possible and even more convenient. Finally, although the number of patients that received rifampin concomitantly with dalbavancin was low, the success rate was 70%, suggesting that this combination is not subjected to pharmacokinetic interactions and might be a valid alternative to the regimen of levofloxacin plus rifampin for orthopedic implant infections. These results are in agreement with a not-yet-published randomized, open-label trial comparing dalbavancin at 1,500 mg on days 1 and 8 versus the standard of care (SOC) for osteomyelitis (excluding implant infections). The researchers showed a clinical cure rate of 94% versus 88% after 1 year of follow-up, and the drug was well tolerated (U. Rappo, V. Shevchenko, O. Shevchenko, A. Jandourek, P. Gonzalez, S. Puttagunta, M. Dunne, A. Suen, V. MasCasullo, D. Melnick, R. Miceli, M. Kovacevic, and G. De Bock, presented at the 28th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases [ECCMID], 21 to 24 April 2018).
Our study has some limitations. The first limitation is the retrospective nature of the study as well as the heterogeneity of the patients. Second, the majority of treatments began after the infection was under control, which could lead to overestimation of the success rate, and the follow-up period, which in general should be 2 years for these infections, was short.
In conclusion, ≥2 doses of dalbavancin is a safe regimen for treating bone and joint infections, and our results show an acceptable success rate that should be confirmed in future prospective studies.