PED MERMAIDS

Multizentrische EuRopäische Studie zu häufigen (MAjor) Infektionserkrankungen (Disease Syndromes) – (MERMAIDS): ambulant erworbene Sepsis-ähnliche Syndrome und akute respiratorische Infektionen im Kindesalter

01/06/2016 to 31/03/2019

This study includes 1000 children admitted to hospital care with a new episode of community-acquired sepsis-like syndrome (SLS) or ARI and age-matched afebrile controls attending the same centre for elective surgery or as an outpatient. SLS will include infants with severe symptoms including CNS symptoms, aseptic meningitis and encephalitis. The primary objectives are to estimate the proportion of children ≤ 6 months with sepsis-like syndrome (SLS) which is attributable to Enterovirus (EV) or Human Parechovirus (HPeV) infection and the proportions of cases of ARI in children aged 0 to 5 years old attributable to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza virus (FLU), human rhinovirus (HRV) infection or S. pneumonia. Secondary objectives are to assess associations between viral or bacterial load and between viral-viral and viral – bacterial co-detection and severity of diseases and to describe the clinical management of children admitted to hospital with these symptoms across Europe. Moreover, to document proportion of SLS associated with detection of specific subtypes of EV/HPeV in blood by region and year and the medium-term health outcome of EV/HPeV associated sepsis-like syndrome. The gene expression results from the ARI group will be compared with the adult study to establish whether common pathways exist that may explain the development of severe ARI in both adults and young children.