ICE-CAP

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  ICE-CAP: The Inflammatory, Clinical and microbial Ecology of Community Acquired Pneumonias

• IRAS ID

  260210

• Contact name

  Damian Downey

• Contact email

  d.downey@qub.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Queen's University Belfast

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP) is common acute chest illness, commonly described as a “severe chest infection”. CAP affects around 220,000 people of any age, each year in the UK. CAP can be serious, even life-threatening and often requires hospital admission. Making sure appropriate treatment, with strong antibiotics, starts early is important to recovery. Current treatment for CAP, especially antibiotic regimes, could be improved, but further study is needed to understand how best to do this.
  
  Current tests on sputum, urine and blood often do not find a cause for CAP. Antibiotic treatment is given based on guidelines, rather than specific to an individual. The aim of this study is to find if a simple set of laboratory measurements taken early in CAP treatment, can provide doctors with more helpful information about the causes of CAP, and how individuals respond to antibiotics. It is hoped this could help doctors better understand which bugs cause CAP, how best to diagnose these bugs and assist in making individual decisions on antibiotics in the future.

  The study will be conducted within the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust (BHSCT). Any individuals admitted to hospitals within BHSCT, requiring treatment for CAP, are eligible for this study. This study is made up of two face to face visits, on admission to hospital and 48-72 hours later. At each visit blood and sputum samples will be taken. The samples will be sent to the BHSCT and Queen’s University laboratories to undergo new types of testing for bugs and levels of inflammation. There are no other extra samples or visits after 72 hours, and care from the medical team will continue as usual throughout. At the end of treatment, and for three months after, the study team will follow up participants through medical notes and Electronic Care Record.

• REC name

  North West - Greater Manchester Central Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  19/NW/0325

• Date of REC Opinion

  18 Jun 2019

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion