Network meta-analysis evaluates cranberry products, liquid therapies for UTI

In this video, Christian Moro, PhD, BSc, BEd, MBus, SFHEA, describes the background behind the European Urology Focus paper, “Cranberry Juice, Cranberry Tablets, or Liquid Therapies for Urinary Tract Infection: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-analysis.” Moro is associate dean of External Engagement and an associate professor of Biomedical Sciences and Medicine within the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine at Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia.

Transcription:

Please describe the background for this study.

One of the things that's been identified is over 90% of the UTI presentations have found bugs that are antibiotic resistant, antimicrobial resistant. And so there's a real interest in trying to alleviate the requirement for antibiotics, and even then, trying to reduce and alleviate the incidence of UTIs would be ideally the way to solve this. With that concerning increasing rate of antibiotic resistance, we wanted to look at what's currently known? One of the things that has been suggested, and there's been a bit of research into it, is whether cranberry juice works to reduce UTIs. There's been some evidence showing that cranberry juice works. There's also evidence showing that fluid works. We know if you are dehydrated, it increases the risk of UTIs, and if you increase fluids, it does help to clear them out, and does have some benefits for UTIs. What hadn't been done, though, is putting the different groups together. So is it fluids, or is it increased fluids with cranberry? So to do that, we had to do a bit of statistical magic in a process called a network meta-analysis. A network meta-analysis is like a systematic review, but there are multiple groupings; rather than just compare between two, we're comparing between multiple groups. We looked at, for example, no treatment vs increased fluids and no treatments vs cranberry compounds, and then no treatments vs cranberry compounds and fluids, like in cranberry juice. And then we looked at those 3 comparators all against each other, and compared them. It was a different way to look at it, to say, look, is cranberry juice simply the same as what we see with increased fluids? So it was worth doing, and something interesting.

This transcription was edited for clarity.