Project description
Viral vs bacterial infection: time for definitive diagnosis
Distinguishing between bacterial and viral infections based on clinical symptoms is often unreliable, resulting in unnecessary hospitalisations, invasive tests, and inappropriate antibiotic treatments for viral infections. To address this issue, the EU-funded PERFORM project aims to enhance the definitive diagnosis and management of febrile patients. Researchers will employ advanced techniques like genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics on patient cohorts to identify reliable blood biomarkers for differentiating bacterial and viral infections. Successful validation of these biomarkers in diverse patient populations across Europe will ultimately lead to new diagnostic assays and comprehensive healthcare management plan for paediatric patients.
Objective
The management of febrile patients is one of the most common and important problems facing healthcare providers. Distinction between bacterial infections and trivial viral infection on clinical grounds is unreliable, and as a result innumerable patients worldwide undergo hospitalization, invasive investigation and are treated with antibiotics for presumed bacterial infection when, in fact, they are suffering from self-resolving viral infection.
We aim to improve diagnosis and management of febrile patients, by application of sophisticated phenotypic, transcriptomic (genomic, proteomic) and bioinformatic approaches to well characterised large-scale, multi-national patient cohorts already recruited with EU funding. We will identify, and validate promising new discriminators of bacterial and viral infection including transcriptomic and clinical phenotypic markers. The most accurate markers distinguishing bacterial and viral infection will be evaluated in prospective cohorts of patients reflecting the different health care settings across European countries. By linking sophisticated new genomic and proteomic approaches to careful clinical phenotyping, and building on pilot data from our previous studies we will develop a comprehensive management plan for febrile patients which can be rolled out in healthcare systems across Europe.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsantibiotics
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsRNA
- natural scienceschemical sciencesanalytical chemistrymass spectrometry
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug resistanceantibiotic resistance
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
SW7 2AZ LONDON
United Kingdom
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Participants (18)
WC1E 7HT London
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L69 7ZX Liverpool
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OX1 2JD Oxford
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NE1 7RU Newcastle Upon Tyne
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3015 GD Rotterdam
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1105AZ Amsterdam
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10561 Athina
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Participation ended
6525 XZ Nijmegen
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15703 Santiago De Compostela
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8010 Graz
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1000 Ljubljana
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1007 Riga
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Participation ended
SN2 1FL Swindon
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CV4 7EZ Coventry
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The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
69280 Marcy-l'Etoile
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80539 MUNCHEN
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3012 Bern
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6525 GA Nijmegen
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