Title: Spot Sepsis
Funder: Wellcome Trust

Abstract: Spot Sepsis is a multi-site prospective observational cohort study, conceived by the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) and Médecins Sans Frontières Spain (MSF SPAIN). Over 15 months, we will enroll a minimum of 4,900 children between the age of one month and five years with acute febrile illness presenting to six regional hospitals across Asia (Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Bangladesh). We will collect key historical variables, record presenting clinical features, measure host biomarker profiles, and determine fever aetiology for key target pathogens. We will follow children up and ascertain clinical outcome at 48-hours and 28-days. Using this data, we will derive and perform external validation of a risk stratification algorithm, to predict progression to severe disease in children presenting with acute febrile illness in resource limited settings. The project, a partnership between MORU and MSF SPAIN, is motivated by a shared translational research vision: a desire to improve identification of children with acute infections at-risk for progressing to severe illness or sepsis. This will in turn allow more efficient and effective referral choices in more remote contexts, particularly those affected by conflict, where the decision to refer a child to higher care carries substantial risk or burden. We will benefit from the collaboration with our project partners, who have considerable experience in biomarker discovery/validation and clinical prediction rule (CPR) derivation and validation. The project is being co-funded by MSF Spain and the Wellcome Trust through the ‘Innovations for Impact in low and middle-income countries’ Flagship.

Lay abstract: Spot Sepsis is a multi-site prospective observational cohort study, conceived by the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) and Médecins Sans Frontières Spain (MSF). Over 15 months, we will enroll 4,400 children between the age of one month and five years with acute febrile illness presenting to five regional hospitals across Asia (Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia, Laos and Bangladesh). We will collect key historical variables, record presenting clinical features, measure host biomarker profiles, and determine fever aetiology for key target pathogens. We will follow children up and ascertain clinical outcome at 48-hours and 28-days. Using this data, we will derive and perform external validation of a risk stratification algorithm, to predict progression to severe disease in children presenting with acute febrile illness in resource-limited settings. The project, a partnership between MORU and MSF, is motivated by a shared translational research vision: a desire to improve identification of children with acute infections at-risk for progressing to severe illness or sepsis. We will benefit from the collaboration with our project partners, who have considerable experience in biomarker discovery/validation and clinical prediction rule (CPR) derivation and validation.

Research activity codes: 4.1 DISCOVERY AND PRECLINICAL TESTING OF MARKERS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Health categories: INFLAMMATORY AND IMMUNE SYSTEM;INFECTION