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| |  AUA: Cranberry Juice As Urinary Tract Infection Preventative Not Cost Effective By Ed Susman Special to DG News
ANAHEIM, CA -- June 4, 2001 -- Cranberry juice may prevent some urinary tract infections but its use as prophylaxis comes at a relatively high cost, says Lynn Stothers, MD, assistant professor of surgery at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Dr. Stothers enrolled 150 sexually active women in the study to determine if drinking cranberry juice daily or taking cranberry juice tablets could reduce the number of the infections - as reported in previous studies and accepted in alternative medicine circles as an effective preventative agent. She found that the women taking the juice did have fewer urinary tract infections - about 0.4 infections a year less than the women taking the cranberry-like placebo juice and tablets, she said at the 96th annual meeting of the American Urological Association. There were 16 infections among the placebo patients, she said, but there were nine infections among those drinking the juice, and 10 among those taking the tablet supplements. But the cost was fairly high. The extra cost of drinking cranberry juice daily meant that the price for preventing one infection by drinking the juice as a prophylactic agent was CDN$3,333. The tablets were less expensive, she said, but their use still meant that it cost CDN$1,890 to prevent one infection. The women were followed for one year. On the other hand, if a woman suffered a urinary tract infection the costs for the doctor's visit, laboratory tests to determine presence of the infectious agent and a course of antibiotics to kill off the infection amounted to around CDN$50 to $100. Dr. Stothers also scrutinized antibiotic use among the women - a secondary endpoint - but she did not find a statistically significant difference among the three groups in the double-blind, randomized study. The women in the study ranged in age from 21 to 72, but the average age was 42. To be included in the study the women had to have had two urinary tract infections in the previous year.
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