What we do
About our project
Background information
A reliable diagnostic approach (whether a single test or a clinical and laboratory algorithm) that increases the accuracy of diagnosis of severe bacterial infection, and identifies patients with viral infection, will reduces unnecessary investigation and treatment with antibiotics, and would have an immense impact on individual children and families; reduce hospital admissions and invasive investigations; reduce healthcare costs, and contribute to the reduction in antibiotic resistance.
Overall aim
We aim to improve the diagnosis and management of febrile children by application of sophisticated transcriptomic, proteomic, and bioinformatic approaches to well-characterized large-scale, multinational patient cohorts already recruited with EU funding and a new validation cohort.
Research method
Settings: The PERFORM clinical network Erasmus MC participates in 2 projects:
- Management and Outcome of Fever in children in Europe (MOFICHE) - is a prospective observational study assessing the management and outcome of children presenting with fever to emergency departments (ED) across Europe. Data included in MOFICHE will be collected as part of routine clinical care.
- Biomarker validation using prospectively recruited patients and patient samples (BIVA). Additional research blood samples will be taken from children with fever or suspected infection presenting at an emergency department or pediatric intensive care unit. The samples will be used to validate biomarker.
Desirable outcome
We will identify promising new personalized discriminators of bacterial and viral infection that can be used to develop simple personalized tests for application at the point of care. We will assess current management of febrile illness across Europe using quantitative and qualitative methods (including cost-effectiveness analysis) to inform selection of the best management strategies using our new tests in the varied healthcare settings of Europe.
Read more information about this research project on the website www.perform2020.eu
Collaborations
Collaborations outside of Erasmus MC
Imperial College London, United Kingdom, London
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, London
University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, Liverpool
Oxform Vaccine Group, United Kingdom, Oxford
Newcastle University, United Kingdom, Newcastle
AMC, the Netherlands, Amsterdam
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, Athens
Radboud University, the Netherlands, Nijmegen
Medical University of Graz, Austria, Graz
University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Slovenia, Ljubljana
Riga Stradins University, Latvia, Riga
MRC Unit The Gambia, Gambia, Banjul
Micropathology Ltd, United Kingdom, Coventry
bioMérieux, France, Marcy l'Etoile
Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Germany, München
Universität Bern, Switzerland, Bern