Intravenous-oral itraconazole versus oral posaconazole in preventing invasive fungal diseases for acute leukemia patients

Abstract

Invasive fungal diseases (IFDs) are major and lethal infectious complications for patients with neutropenia after chemotherapy. Prophylaxis with intravenous and oral suspended itraconazole (200 mg Q12h intravenously × 2 days followed by 5 mg/kg·d orally in twice) or oral suspension of posaconazole (200 mg Q8h) was administered for preventing IFDs. The only 2 episodes of proven IFDs were not included after propensity-score matching (PSM), while the incidence of possible IFDs was 8.2% (9/110) in itraconazole group and 1.8% (2/110) in posaconazole group, respectively (P =.030). In clinical failure analysis, the failure rate of posaconazole group was lower as compared to the itraconazole group (2.7% vs 10.9%, P =.016). Both intravenous-oral itraconazole and posaconazole suspension are effective in preventing IFDs, while posaconazole suspension seems more tolerable.