A combination of two antibiotics is often prescribed to treat community-acquired pneumonia in children, but a JAMA Pediatrics study is now showing that using just one of the two has the same benefit to patients in most cases.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) are leading a multicenter clinical trial to evaluate whether a shorter course of antibiotics — five days instead of 10 — is effective at treating community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children who show improvement after the first few days of taking antibiotics.

New Vanderbilt-led research shows hospitals are doing a better job of using antibiotics less commonly associated with antibiotic resistance to treat children hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP).

Respiratory viruses, not bacterial infections, are the most commonly detected causes of community-acquired pneumonia in children, according to new research released Feb. 26 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Children hospitalized for pneumonia have similar outcomes, including length of stay and costs, regardless of whether they are treated with “big gun” antibiotics such as ceftriaxone or cefotaxime or more narrowly focused antibiotics such as ampicillin or penicillin.