PREFIX

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Point of care testing using FebriDx to improve antibiotic use for respiratory tract infections in primary care: a mixed methods feasibility study

• IRAS ID

  315764

• Contact name

  Christopher Wilcox

• Contact email

  christopher.wilcox@soton.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Research Governance Office, University of Southampton

• Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

  NCT05534555

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  It can be difficult to tell the difference between viral and bacterial infections. Many patients are therefore prescribed antibiotics unnecessarily. Overuse of antibiotics is leading to a crisis of ‘antibiotic resistance’, where antibiotics no longer work for some infections.

  FebriDx ® is a new hand-held test that uses a ‘finger-prick’ of blood, and within 10 minutes, provides a result that can help clinicians decide whether an infection is likely to be caused by a virus or bacteria. This could help clinicians decide when antibiotics are needed, but the test has not been adequately tested in primary care.

  We would like to do a future study to test whether FebriDx can safely reduce antibiotic prescriptions in primary care. However, before we do this, we need to do a smaller ‘feasibility’ study to explore how easy to use the FebriDx test is and, what GPs and patients think of the test, and to help us design a larger future study.

  Aims

  1) Explore whether FebriDx could reduce the use of antibiotics for chest infections in primary care.
  2) Explore how feasible it would be to do a large research study in the future using FebriDx

  Methods

  We will recruit up to ten GP practices, each given 20-40 FebriDx tests (300 total).

  Stage one
  Patients with a chest infection will be invited to participate if their clinician has decided that they are likely to prescribe antibiotics. Following consent, the clinician will record some basic information about the patient, use the FebriDx test, and then record whether or not they prescribed antibiotics and if they think the test had an effect on their decision.

  Stage two
  Clinicians and patients will be interviewed on how useful they think FebriDx testing is, and how they think we should design a larger future study.

• REC name

  East of England - Cambridge South Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  22/EE/0176

• Date of REC Opinion

  26 Sep 2022

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion