PERFORM - Personalised Risk assessment in Febrile illness to Optimise Real-life Management across the European Union

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:

1. 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.
2. 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 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.
• Oxford 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.

Read the publication on the JAMA Network website.