Antibacterial therapy in pneumonia aims to eradicate the
infecting organism.17 Amoxicillin effect is time dependent and
bacterial eradication is achieved when the unbound serum concentration
exceeds the MIC of the causative pathogen for 40%–
50% of the dosing interval.18 Based on the current breakpoints
established to determine pneumococcal susceptibility to antimicrobials19 and data from invasive pneumococcal strains
recovered from pneumonia cases between 2000 and 2005 in
Latin America, the pneumococcal susceptibility to penicillin is
95.1%.20 That is, this trial was conducted in a region with low
prevalence of pneumococcal resistance to penicillin and this
may explain why equivalence was found.