Association between vedolizumab and risk of clostridium difficile infection in patients with ulcerative colitis: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: The medical treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC) includes the use of biological agents such as vedolizumab, a gut-selective alpha4beta7 (ɑ4β7) antagonist. The mechanism of action of vedolizumab involves interfering with leukocyte trafficking into the gut vasculature, which halts inflammation. Due to this mechanism of action, concerns have arisen regarding an increased risk of gut infections, specifically, clostridium difficile infection (CDI). The aim is to provide clarity regarding the association between the use of vedolizumab as a therapy for ulcerative colitis and the risk of developing CDI.

Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted, starting with the scoping search, followed by backward snowballing parallel with keyword-based search to identify related articles. A quality assessment was conducted on the initially selected articles and excluded low-quality papers.

Results: Pooled analyses indicated that there was no significant association between the use of vedolizumab and the risk of developing CDI (effect size = 0.03 [-0.02, 0.07]).

Conclusions: Vedolizumab does not increase the risk of CDI in patients with UC. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings.