Safety of sulfamethoxazole–trimethoprim for the treatment of bacterial infection in outpatient settings: A systematic review and meta‐analysis with active comparator disproportionality analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
AIMS: Sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (SMX-TMP) is a widely used antibiotic for treating bacterial infections, but its safety in adult outpatients remains understudied. This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the safety profile of SMX-TMP and identified critical research gaps. The pharmacovigilance study aimed to validate and extend findings from meta-analyses to better understand the real-world safety of SMX-TMP. METHODS: We searched MEDLINE and Embase up to 12 August 2024, to identify studies comparing adverse drug events (ADEs) following SMX-TMP vs. other antibiotics in adult outpatients. Meta-analyses were performed where data allowed. A pharmacovigilance study using the Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System was conducted to supplement our findings. RESULTS: = 0%, n = 4458 participants, 24 randomized control trials). Pharmacovigilance data confirmed a higher frequencies of skin disorders and other ADEs compared to various comparator drugs. Compared to azithromycin, SMX-TMP was associated with a 5-fold increase in Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a 3-fold increase in toxic epidermal necrolysis, and a 10-fold increase in drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms. Additionally, SMX-TMP showed a 10-fold increase in reports of pancytopenia, a 6-fold increase in neutropenia, a 4-fold increase in both thrombocytopenia and aplastic anaemia, a 56-fold increase in hyperkalaemia, and a 10-fold increase in hyponatraemia. CONCLUSION: Our meta-analyses and pharmacovigilance study suggested SMX-TMP was associated with increased risk of ADEs compared to other antibiotics including amoxicillin/clavulanate, azithromycin and nitrofurantoin. Further robust research is essential to confirm these safety signals and guide clinical practice.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.015 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".