The Lancet Infectious Diseases, January 2018 Earlier this year, the use of procalcitonin in guiding antibiotic therapy for patients with acute respiratory infections was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. To assess the safety of procalcitonin-guided treatments with ARI in different clinical settings, Prof. Philipp Schuetz, et al. conducted a meta-analysis of 26 randomized controlled trials.

"Widespread implementation of procalcitonin protocols in patients with acute respiratory infections thus has the potential to improve antibiotic management with positive effects on clinical outcomes and on the current threat of increasing antibiotic multiresistance."

Read the full article here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(17)30592-3/fulltext?elsca1=etoc

by Mari Couasnon, Save the Children Eight years ago, I started my journey in biomedical science and research. While I have spent much of this time at the bench (with a cage of mice nearby, and pipette and agar plates in hand), I have never been far from the global health arena. I had taken what felt like countless hours of classes and lab work, so naturally I thought that I was "in the know" when it came to global health. You can imagine then my surprise and embarrassment when during my intervie...

A comment from the coordinator, Deep Breaths blog post by Mari Couasnon, upcoming events, and PIN member and partner updates for January 2018. A comment from the coordinator Thank you to all who joined us for our CPAP and child pneumonia webinar on January 18, 2018 and a special thank you to Drs. Eric McCollum, Patrick Wilson, and Mohammod Chisti for their informative and insightful presentations. Be sure to check out the newest addition to the 2018 PIN member newsletters: Deep Breaths, a sectio...

​ by Ambrose Agweyu, PhD, Richard J Lilford, PhD, and Mike English, MD A multi-hospital, retrospective cohort study by Ambrose Agweyu et. al. assesses whether some children categorized as eligible for outpatient treatment have a risk of death warranting their treatment in hospital. "In settings of high mortality, WAZ less than −3 SD or any degree of pallor among children with non-severe pneumonia was associated with a clinically important risk of death. Our data suggest that admission to hospita...

by Amy Lieberman, January 22, 2018 Pneumonia remains the largest killer of children across the globe. We have the tools and the knowledge, so why are we not seeing a faster decline in child pneumonia mortality?   "Progress on pneumonia in children — increasingly presenting in countries in conflict and middle-income countries — is still too slow, pneumonia experts such as Klugman and Peterson say. While the under-five mortality rate has more than halved worldwide since 1990, pneumonia c...

Talks by Eric McCollum (Johns Hopkins School of Medicine), Patrick Wilson (Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health), and Mohammod Chisti (icddr,b). Webinar date: January 18, 2018. View the presentation slide deck using the SlideShare link .

The Global Pneumonia Market Analysis & Outlook 2018-2025 report provides extensive research and detailed analysis of the present market along with future outlook. A discussion of the major growth drivers and challenges of the market, covering U.S. and Europe along with the global market is included in the report. Furthermore, the report profiles key players of the market including Merck & Co. Inc., Allergan Plc, The Medicines Company and Nabriva Therapeutics. View the full report here .

The Lancet Respiratory Medicine December 2017: Authored by Jesus F. Bermejo-Martin et. al., this publication looks more closely at the immunological response and what it might be able to tell us about community-acquired pneumonia cases. "Increasing evidence suggests that evaluation of a patient's immune response could help to improve severity assessment and prognosis prediction in this disease ... Large integrative studies that simultaneously evaluate innate and adaptive responses are needed to obtain further evidence on the potential clinical applications of immunological profiling in the disease." Read the full text at: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(17)30444-7/fulltext

The Lancet Infectious Diseases To help us achieve global targets for tuberculosis elimination, new ways to screen for tuberculosis are needed. This paper by Christina Yoon et. al. suggests that point-of-care CRP-based TB screenings should be more strongly considered by HIV/AIDS programs. "The performance characteristics of CRP support its use as a tuberculosis screening test for people living with HIV with CD4 count less than or equal to 350 cells/L who are initiating ART. HIV/AIDS programmes should consider point-of-care CRP-based tuberculosis screening to improve the efficiency of intensified case finding and increase uptake of tuberculosis preventive therapy." Find the full article here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(17)30488-7/fulltext?elsca1=etoc

The Lancet Global Health This article is a call for everyone to play their part in mitigating the threat of antimicrobial resistance. It also emphasizes the importance of guidelines for prescribing antibiotics and the Global Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance. "In the rural west of China, a staggering 80% of children aged between 2 and 14 years who are diagnosed with an upper respiratory tract infection (RTI) in an outpatient clinic receive a prescription for antibiotics ... The reasons for over-prescription in China are multiple, but include the need for hospitals to acquire revenue via drug sales, the demand from patients, and poor knowledge on the part of physicians." Read the full article at: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(17)30432-1/fulltext?elsca1=etoc Also be sure to view

NICE guidelines on prescribing antibiotics for respiratory tract infections: (https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/CG69/chapter/1-guidance#the-clinical-effectiveness-and-cost-effectiveness-of-antibiotic-management-strategies-for)Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance: (http://www.who.int/antimicrobial-resistance/publications/global-action-plan/en/)

The United4Oxygen Alliance is the world's first public-private partnership to support governments to increase access to pulse oximetry and oxygen, with a special focus on maternal, newborn and child survival. With an initial focus on Ethiopia, the Alliance is supporting the Federal Government of Ethiopia to implement its National Medical Oxygen and Pulse Oximetry Scale Up Road Map (2016-2020/21). The 20 members of the Alliance are working together to increase the availability of pulse oximetry s...

Announcements CPAP innovations and pneumonia webinar Our next Pneumonia Innovations Network webinar event will be held on Thursday, January 18, 2018 at 10AM EST. The webinar topic will be CPAP innovations and pneumonia. Join us for presentations by Mohammod Chisti: Non-invasive ventilation in managing childhood pneumonia: Bangladesh scenario Eric McCollum: CPAP IMPACT (Improving Mortality for Pneumonia in African Children Trial) in Malawi Patrick Wilson: Effectiveness of Continuous Positive Airw...

Pneumonia Innovations Network member Lifebox has been redesigning their highly regarded pulse oximeter, an instrument originally designed for safe surgery, so that it can be used to help detect pneumonia in small children. The new probe was presented at this year's WSPID Congress. Find out more from Dr. Eric McCollum, pediatric pulmonologist at Johns Hopkins & one of the senior members of the #LifeboxPneumoniaInnovation team here . On twitter? Check out #LifeboxPneumoniaInnovation and #Union...

Dr. Adegok G. Falade presented his oxygen work at Nigerian hospitals at the well-attended Save the Children/ Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Pneumonia Innovations Symposium at WSPID in Shenzhen, China.

Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, December 22, 2017: A systematic literature review by Deardorff, McCollum, and Ginsburg identified three pediatric pneumonia risk scores that predict mortality specifically, and two treatment failure. While these risk scores may help to predict adverse events, these findings bring about some important questions: "While pediatric pneumonia-specific risk scores have been developed and validated, it is yet unclear if implementation is feasible, what impact, if any, implemented scores may have on child outcomes, or how broadly scores may be generalized. To increase the feasibility of implementation, future research should focus on developing scores based on routinely collected data." Read the full article at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29278608

Child wasting (severe, recent episodes of malnutrition) is one of the leading risks of death from pneumonia. Sangwei Lu, a scientist from the University of California Berkeley, has developed "NutMox," a mix of the recommended child-friendly antibiotic amoxicillin with a ready-to-eat therapeutic food allowing malnourished children being treated for pneumonia to also be treated for underlying malnutrition. The subsequent partnership with Michael Chansler from PATH has accelerated its development to market. This collaboration has been recognized as one of six winners of Johnson & Johnson's "Gen H" Challenge grant. We congratulate Sangwei Lu and Michael Chansler, both committed members of the Pneumonia Innovations Network, and wish them success in the next stages of development. Read more here.

Announcements Our next Pneumonia Innovations Network webinar event will be held in January of 2018. Mark your calendars December 2-5, 2017 10th Congress of the World Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases (WSPID) in Shenzhen, China December 2, 2017 Save the Children pneumonia symposium on Pneumonia Innovations at WSPID December 6-10, 2017 Dubai Infectious Diseases Week in Dubai, UAE More details on these important events are listed below! A Comment from the Coordinator We are currently workin...

Congratulations to our network members recently inducted into the #PneumoniaFighters Class of 2017! • Quique Bassat (Barcelona Institute for Global Health) • HRH Infanta Cristina of Spain ("la Caixa" Foundation) • David Fleming (PATH) • Kristoffer Gandrup-Marino (UNICEF) • Keith Klugman (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) • Cammie Lee (Results for Development) • Carolyn Miles (Save the Children) • Ngozi Onwudiwe (Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria) • Shamim Qazi (WHO) • Kate Schroder (Clinton...

A Clinton Global Initiative, the 20+ United4Oxygen partners support governments with national plans to increase access to both pulse oximetry and oxygen throughout their health systems. Increased access to these two neglected commodities has the potential to prevent not only newborn and child deaths from big killers like pneumonia, but also maternal deaths, and adult deaths from communicable and non-communicable diseases and traumatic injuries. A special thank you to the team at Masimo for suppo...

Grand Challenges Canada has announced a $CDN 2 million investment in 20 Canadian innovations to address persistent challenges in women's and children's health in low- and middle-income countries. Congratulations to Pneumonia Innovations Network member Israel Amirav from The University of Alberta, who received $CDN 100K for the "Multimometer," a device which simultaneously measures respiratory rate, temperature, oxygen saturation and heart rate to aid in the diagnosis of children with pneumonia a...