14-day pantoprazole- and amoxicillin-containing high-dose dual therapy for Helicobacter pylori eradication in elderly patients: A prospective, randomized controlled trial.

Currently, the management of (ri) infection in elderly patients is controversial. We investigated whether high-dose dual therapy would serve as the first-line therapy in elderly patients. This was a single-center, randomized study of 150 elderly patients with infection who were randomly assigned to 14-day therapy with pantoprazole 40 mg 3 times daily and either amoxicillin 1,000 mg 3 times daily or amoxicillin 1,000 mg twice daily, clarithromycin 500 mg twice daily and bismuth 220 mg twice daily. eradication was evaluated by a 13C-urea breath test 4 weeks after the completion of treatment. Successful eradication was achieved in 89.3% of the high-dose dual therapy (HT) group in the intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis, 91.7% in the modified intention-to-treat (mITT) analysis, and 93.0% for per-protocol (PP) analysis which was similar to the bismuth-containing quadruple therapy (BQT) group (86.6%, 87.8%, and 90.3%, respectively). There were no significant difference between the HT group and the BQT group in the ITT analysis ( = 0.484), mITT analysis ( = 0.458), or PP analysis ( = 0.403). HT was associated with fewer side effects (10.6% of patients) than BQT (26.6%) ( = 0.026). In this trial, we found that 14-day HT had a similar eradication rate to BQT but fewer side effects, which may be better for elderly patients.