Design and Patients
This was a secondary analysis of the Rapid Empiric Treatment with
Oseltamivir Study (RETOS) (4). Briefly, RETOS was a randomized,
unblinded, trial of adult patients hospitalized with lower respiratory
tract infections in Kentucky from 2009 through 2012. Patients were
randomized to group A (standard of care) or group B (standard of care
plus oseltamivir) as early as possible after hospital admission but
within 24 hours of enrollment. Both per-protocol and intent-to-treat
analyses were performed in the original study since all patients with
lower respiratory tract infections were randomized regardless of
etiology, though subsets with documented influenza virus infection by
reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (rt-PCR) were also
analyzed. For the purposes of the present study, all patients in the
intent-to-treat analysis (randomized patients with lower respiratory
tract infection regardless of documented etiology) were included.