Impact of Comprehensive Molecular Tests on Antimicrobial Stewardship in Community-acquired Pneumonia

Summary

Background: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) continues to be a major health problem with significant mortality and it's one of the main causes of antibiotic prescription. Antibiotic overuse is a key driver of antimicrobial resistance and exposes patients to an increased risk of other antibiotic-related adverse events. The investigators aim to assess if rapid molecular tests are an effective tool to reduce antibiotic use in CAP compared to routine microbiological testing.

Design: Randomized, controlled, open-label clinical trial with two parallel groups (1:1) settled in a two-year multicenter, two tertiary care hospitals, between 2019 and 2021. Eligible participants will be non-severely immunosuppressed adult patients hospitalized for CAP through the emergency department. Primary endpoint will be antibiotic consumption measured by days of antibiotic therapy (DOT) per 1000 patient-days. Secondary end points will be: de-escalation to narrower antibiotic treatment, time to switch from intravenous to oral antibiotics, antibiotic-related side effects, length of hospital stay, days until clinical stability, need for ICU admission, need for hospital readmission in the 30 days after randomization, death from any cause in the 30 days after randomization. Patients will be randomly assigned to receive experimental diagnosis (comprehensive molecular testing added to routine microbiological testing) or standard diagnosis (only microbiological routine testing). A total of 220 patients are estimated in the experimental arm (undergoing comprehensive molecular testing) and 220 control subjects (undergoing routine testing) to be able to reject the null hypothesis that experimental and control groups have equal DOT per 1000 patients-days with a probability above 0.8.

Discussion: Comprehensive molecular tests could be a key tool in the optimization of etiological diagnostics in CAP and, therefore, a key element in antimicrobial stewardship programs developed to improve safety and antibiotic use in CAP.

Conditions

• Community-acquired Pneumonia

Interventions

DIAGNOSTIC_TEST

real-time multiplex PCR

Patients will be randomly assigned to receive experimental diagnosis (comprehensive molecular testing added to routine microbiological testing) AND standard diagnosis microbiological procedures

DIAGNOSTIC_TEST

Standard diagnostic procedures

Patients who will undergo only the standard microbiological diagnostic procedures: blood cultures, Gram stain and culture sputum when possible, Gram and pleural fluid culture when appropriate, urine determination of the pneumococcal and Legionella pneumophila serogroup antigens type 1. A serological study will be carried out for the etiological agents of atypical pneumonia in the acute and convalescent phases of the infection.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Fundació La Marató de TV3

  collaborator OTHER

• Department of Health, Generalitat de Catalunya

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jordi Carratalà Fernández, PhD · Institut d'Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-02-20

Primary Completion

2023-04-24

Completion

2023-04-24

Countries

• Spain

Study Locations