Infection, Inflammation and Immunology
Aims
Infection is a common and important problem in the paediatric intensive care unit. For some children, a severe infection is the reason they are so unwell. For others, infection has complicated their admission. Current diagnostic tests can take several days to provide results, and when organisms are found it can be challenging to separate pathogens from those just colonising. Delays In diagnosis lead to antibiotic overuse, a major problem in an ear of increasing antibiotic resistance.
Focus Areas
- Infection diagnostics. Integration of both host biomarkers and pathogen specific information is likely to provide the most accurate diagnostic tests of infection. We use respiratory tract infection as an exemplar case to test this hypothesise that integrating the lung host response (assessed in broncho-alveolar lavage) with comprehensive pan-pathogen metagenomic data will lead to a test more capable of definitively identifying the organisms which are the actual pathogens and discriminate these from non-infection related colonisation.
- Mechanisms of severe illness. We also aim to study those individuals who have unexplained severe manifestations of infection. This may include apparent immune deficiency or harmful excessive inflammatory response currently undefined at a molecular level. We seek to understand better why protective mechanisms are not functioning, which may lead to the identification of novel immunodysregulatory or immunodeficiency disorders.
Leadership
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Dr Jonathan Cohen, KCL Hon Senior Lecturer KCL, Head of Service for Paediatric Immunology & Infectious Diseases Evelina GSTT)
Theme Membership and Internal collaborators
Prof Manu Shankar-Hari, Lead, Centre for Critical Illness Research KCL, Consultant Intensive Care GSTT
Dr Gaia Nebbia, Hon Reader Clinical Virology, Lead for GSTT/KCL Centre for Infection & Diagnostic Research, Consultant Virologist GSTT
Dr Adela Alcole-Medina, Consultant Clinical Scientist, GSTT/KCL Centre for Infection & Diagnostic Research
Dr Luke Snell, NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Infectious Diseases / Microbiology KCL / GSTT
Dr Jon Lillie, KCL honorary senior lecturer, Evelina London ECMO lead, National ECMO involvement: Co-chair of UK national ECMO group, Clinical lead for NHS England ECMO service specification
Dr Benjamin Crulli, KCL honorary senior lecturer, Evelina PICU consultant