The UA DEM was the first among 18 sites in the U.S. to enroll a patient for the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) study “Application of Transcriptional Signatures for Diagnosis of Febrile Infants (BioSigs II).” The study is evaluating a new and better way to identify invasive bacterial illness, such as meningitis, bacteremia and urinary tract infections in infants three months old or less. Researchers hope to spare the rule-out sepsis workup in otherwise healthy febrile infants by taking a small blood sample and having a 2-4 hour turnaround time to test if bacteria, virus, or both or neither.
“This is a very exciting project as it has the potential to revolutionize how we manage these infants,” said Aaron Leech, MD, the UA’s study principal investigator.
Last August, the University of Arizona Emergency Medicine Research Center (AEMRC) – Tucson at the UA Department of Emergency Medicine was named one of six U.S. Research Node Centers for PECARN. Kurt Denninghoff, MD, DEM associate head for research, is the Southwest Research Node principal investigator.