Empiric Quadruple vs. Triple Therapy for Primary Treatment of Helicobacter pylori Infection: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Efficacy and Tolerability
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Recent treatment guidelines recommend two first-line therapies for Helicobacter pylori infection: proton pump inhibitor (PPI), bismuth, tetracycline, and metronidazole (quadruple therapy) or PPI, clarithromycin, and amoxicillin (triple therapy). We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to compare the efficacy and tolerability of these regimens as first-line treatment of H. pylori. METHODS: A search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google Scholar, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, ACP Journal Club, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness, Cochrane Methodology Register, Health Technology Assessment Database, and abstracts from prominent gastrointestinal scientific meetings was carried out. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing bismuth quadruple therapy to clarithromycin triple therapy were selected for meta-analysis. Two independent reviewers extracted data, using standardized data forms. Meta-analysis was carried out with the metan command in Stata 10.1. Funnel plots and subgroup analyses were carried out. RESULTS: Nine RCTs (N=1,679) were included. Although dosing regimens of clarithromycin triple therapy were quite consistent between trials, dosing regimens varied considerably for bismuth quadruple therapy. Bismuth quadruple therapy achieved eradication in 78.3% of patients, whereas clarithromycin triple therapy achieved an eradication rate of 77.0% (risk ratio (RR)=1.002, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.936-1.073). There was moderate heterogeneity and no evidence for significant publication bias. Subgroup analyses by study location, treatment duration, and study population did not account for the heterogeneity. There were no statistically significant differences in side effects yielded by quadruple vs. clarithromycin triple therapy (RR=1.04, 95% CI: 1.04-1.14). CONCLUSIONS: Quadruple and triple therapies yielded similar eradication rates as primary therapy for H. pylori infection. Both therapies yielded suboptimal eradication rates. Patient compliance and side effects are similar for quadruple and triple therapies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.022 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".