Also increasing, is resistance to other traditional antimicrobial agents among prevalent gram-negative respiratory pathogens, such as Haemophilus influenzae and Moraxella catarrhalis. Sinusitis, a bacterial infection of the mucous membranes lining the nasal sinus cavities, affects an estimated 35 million people each year, making it one of the most common infections in the United States.
Acute sinusitis is often underdiagnosed.
Since symptoms can be difficult to distinguish from colds or allergies, many sufferers never see a doctor for proper diagnosis and antimicrobial treatment. Moraxella catarrhalis is now recognized as a cause of a variety of localized, community-acquired infections, such as maxillary sinusitis and acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis. The emergence of penicillin-resistant strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae has also made treating respiratory tract infections, including sinusitis, increasingly challenging for physicians. The emergence of resistant organisms poses a challenge in clinical practice and has the potential to limit the usefulness of common first-line antibiotics. These results demonstrated that ciprofloxacin and clarithromycin were statistically and therapeutically equivalent.