Pre-delivery Administration of Azithromycin to Prevent Neonatal Sepsis & Death

Summary

Though maternal and neonatal health are high priority areas for international development, maternal and neonatal mortality remain unacceptably high. Worldwide there are 1 million maternal and 4 million neonatal deaths every year and half of them occur in sub-Saharan Africa.

Post-partum and neonatal severe bacterial infections, namely sepsis, are leading causes of maternal and neonatal deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. Newborns can be infected during labour - when passing through the birth canal - and also during the first days/weeks of life, as a consequence of the close physical contact with the mother, when the latter carriers bacteria. As the mother is an important source of bacterial transmission to the newborn, treating mothers with antibiotics during labour should decrease their bacterial carriage and therefore lower transmission to the newborn. As carriage is a necessary step towards severe disease, this intervention should in turn result in the lower occurrence of severe bacterial disease and mortality during the neonatal period.

In many high-income countries, pregnant women are screened during pregnancy for vaginal carriage of Group B Streptococcus, the bacteria responsible for the vast majority of neonatal sepsis in the developed world. If women are carriers, they are treated with intravenous antibiotics during labour to decrease the risk of severe disease to their off-spring. Although this intervention has been successful in developed countries, infrastructure and resource limitations in regions like sub-Saharan Africa prevent both screening and use of intravenous antibiotics. Also, in Africa several bacterial pathogens are responsible for neonatal sepsis and the antibiotics needed in the continent should cover a wider number of bacteria; and ideally cover also bacteria responsible for severe post-partum disease in the mother.

We will conduct a large trial in West Africa, The Gambia and Burkina Faso, with the main objective of determining if a single dose of an oral antibiotic given to women during labour decreases newborn mortality. The trial will also assess the effect of the antibiotic on lowering newborns and maternal hospitalization during the first week's post-partum. We have selected an antibiotic (azithromycin) that in sub-Saharan Africa has already been used for elimination of other prevalent diseases such as trachoma. This antibiotic is safe, requires a single oral administration, has no special storage requirements and has the potential to eliminate most of the bacteria commonly causing severe disease in newborns and post-partum women in the continent. Very important this antibiotic is not widely used in clinical care in the continent, and therefore, any temporal increase of resistance induced by the intervention should not have implications on current treatment guidelines.

Before going to the large trial proposed here (12,000 women to be recruited), we have generated robust preliminary data on the effect of the intervention in a proof-of-concept trial conducted in The Gambia (829 women and their offspring recruited). We found that in fact, babies born from mothers who had taken this antibiotic during labour were less likely to carry bacteria that can potentially cause severe disease. These babies were also three times less likely to have bacterial skin infections or umbilical infections, both highly common among African newborns. Besides, fever or mastitis (again both very common in the region) during the post-partum period were four times lower among mothers who had taken the antibiotic during labour. Such trial confirmed our hypothesis of impact on bacterial transmission but it was too small to assess the effect of the antibiotic on mortality and hospitalizations. The preliminary trial also showed that women from the azithromycin group were less likely to need antibiotics for treatment infections during the puerperal period, decreasing then the pressure on the scarcity of antibiotics available in the continent.

The advantages of our approach are its simplicity, low cost and the possibility of protecting both mothers and babies with the same intervention.

Conditions

• Neonatal SEPSIS

Interventions

DRUG

Azithromycin

The women will be randomized to receive a single dose of Azithromycin or Placebo

DRUG

Placebo Oral Tablet

The women will be randomized to receive a single dose of Azithromycin or Placebo

Sponsors & Collaborators

• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Anna Roca, PhD · MRC Unit The Gambia

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

TRIPLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

16 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-10-21

Primary Completion

2021-05-31

Completion

2021-05-31

Countries

• Burkina Faso
• The Gambia

Study Locations