Risk Factors Leading to Hospital Infection

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  An Epidemiological Study of Host and Microbial Risk Factors Leading to Acquisition of Hospital Infection

• IRAS ID

  166513

• Contact name

  Shiranee Sriskandan

• Contact email

  s.sriskandan@imperial.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Imperial College London

• Duration of Study in the UK

  4 years, 11 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  Title
  Human and Microbial Risk Factors Leading to Hospital Infection

  Research Question
  1. What are the microbial factors that lead to hospital infections?
  Microbes taken from patient samples will be studied to see if they have special properties that might cause hospital infections.

  2. What are the human factors that contribute to infection?
  Information about patients, that is already collected by the NHS, will be used to find factors that might lead to hospital infections.
  We will use information collected from microbes and humans together to build models to study hospital infections.

  Relevance
  England has a high number of hospital infections, this needs to be reduced. Information already collected by hospitals has allowed us to find out valuable information about how these infections are caused. However, we need to collect more detailed information on different factors that can cause hospital infections. This will allow us to find ways of reducing the number of hospital infections.

  Study Subject
  Any patient with a hospital infection of interest, for example due to antibiotic resistance.

  Inclusion criteria
  Any patient we think may have a hospital infection of interest. We will also use patients of similar age and gender but with no suspected hospital infection. This will allow us to make comparisons with patients that have a suspected hospital infection of interest and those that do not have that particular infection.

  Recruitment Location
  Hospitals within the Imperial College Healthcare Trust (St Mary’s Hospital, Hammersmith Hospital and Charing Cross).

  Study Duration
  Five years.

  Samples Taken/Data Collected
  Samples that have been taken for routine medical assessment and are no longer needed, for example bloods or swabs. We will also take an additional swab or sample that is specific to the type of infection we will be investigating. We will also use patient information that is already collected by the NHS for hospital records. We will connect both of these types of information collected (human and microbial) to build models about certain hospital infections. We will make sure that all information collected is anonymous.

  Follow-Up
  A small number of patients will be asked to provide future samples. This will happen a maximum of four times. These follow-up points will be at three, six, twelve and twenty-four months after the patient had taken part into the study.

• REC name

  London - Camden & Kings Cross Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  14/LO/2217

• Date of REC Opinion

  9 Mar 2015

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion