For children with acute infective conjunctivitis, topical antibiotics are associated with a shorter duration of conjunctival symptoms, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Marjo Renko, MD, PhD, and colleagues conducted a randomized trial among children with acute infective conjunctivitis to examine the efficacy of
topical antibiotic therapy. Children (N=88) were randomly assigned to moxifloxacin eye drops (N=30), placebo eye drops (N=27), or no intervention (N=31). In addition, a meta-analysis was conducted that included the current trial and three previous trials (N=584; 300 randomly assigned to topical antibiotics, 284 to placebo). Compared with the no-intervention group, the moxifloxacin group had a significantly shorter time to clinical cure (3.8 vs 5.7 days). Relative to no intervention, both moxifloxacin and placebo eye drops significantly shortened the time to clinical cure in the survival analysis. In the meta-analysis, there was a reduction observed in the proportion of children with conjunctivitis symptoms on days 3-6 associated with use of topical antibiotics compared with placebo (OR, 0.59).
