Join this free webinar sharing the major results of PERFORM; the five-year Horizon 2020 project to develop simple, personalised tests to distinguish between bacterial and viral infections in febrile children.
Chief Investigator, Prof. Mike Levin from Imperial College London will introduce PERFORM’s consortium of researchers and paediatric doctors to present their findings, followed by a plenary discussion for the audience to ask questions to the researchers.
Date/Time: Tue, 29 June 2021, 09:00 – 12:45 (BST)
Further information
Fever is the most common reason that children are brought to professional healthcare services to seek medical treatment. Yet, in many cases it can be challenging for doctors to distinguish the relatively small number of children with serious bacterial infections from the majority that have milder viral illnesses.
Current diagnostic tests are far from perfect, being too slow or not accurate enough to influence the decision on whether to give antibiotics. As a result, a large proportion of children with fever are treated with antibiotics when they do not need them, whilst others with serious bacterial infections may be missed, resulting in severe consequences.
Rather than attempting to detect the specific bacteria and viruses that cause a fever, the PERFORM project took a different approach. Instead, it aimed to improve the diagnosis and management of fever by developing simple, personalised tests to distinguish between bacterial and viral infections by using patterns of molecules detected in the blood. The project has subsequently looked at identifying best-management strategies for using these new tests in varied healthcare settings across Europe.
Building from the study of over 4000 children recruited in the previous EU-funded project (EUCLIDS), PERFORM has applied cutting-edge gene expression and proteomic methods to identify biomarkers that distinguish bacterial from viral infection. The best performing markers were then validated in a newly recruited cohort of 5000 children, and in the final phase, the Consortium translated the most promising biomarkers into simple, rapid tests that will be further validated prior to introduction into clinical use.
Now this research is being taken further, with PERFORM’s EU Horizon 2020-funded sister-project, DIAMONDS (DIAgnosis and Management Of Febrile Illness using RNA Personalised Molecular Signature DiagnosiS), designing new tests employing an innovative approach called Personalised Molecular Signature Diagnosis (PMSD) and is targeting a larger range of illnesses with an expanded consortium.
Speakers (TBC)
Prof. Mike Levin, Imperial College London (UK)
Prof. Federico Martinón-Torres, Servizo Galego de Saúde (Spain)
Prof. Dr Henriëtte Moll, Erasmus Universitair Medisch Centrum Rotterdam (The Netherlands)
Prof. Marieke Emonts, Newcastle University (UK)
Prof. Luregn Schlapbach, University Children’s Hospital Zurich (Switzerland)
Dr Michael Carter, University of Oxford (UK)
Prof. Shrijana Shrestha, University of Oxford (UK)
Dr Effua Usuf, The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (UK)
Dr Ching-Fen Shen, National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan)
Prof. Colin Fink & Dr Marie Voice, Micropathology (UK)
Dr Myrsini Kaforou, Imperial College London (UK)
Dr Karen Brengel-Pesce, bioMérieux (France)
Prof. Taco Kuijpers, Academic Medical Center Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Prof. Shunmay Yeung, The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (UK)
PERFORM has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 668303. The sole responsibility for the content of this project lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
