RESPIRATORY TRACT INFECTIONS IN CHILDREN
PATHOGENESIS AND PREVENTION
Adam Finn
A research group lead by Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics, and based at the Institute of Child Health at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children is doing research to find out how and why children commonly get pneumonia due to the bacterium Streptococcus pneumonia ("pneumococcus") and to find new and effective ways to prevent these infections.
Current projects include a prospective audit of all children who are seen and have chest xrays at the hospital, to find out more about how many cases of pneumonia we see. An additional research study is looking for better ways to diagnose pneumococcal infection among such children and also examining genetic characteristics that may predispose certain children to get pneumonia more easily or more severely than others.
The group is also using tonsils and adenoids, removed at surgery at the hospital, to study the mucosal immune responses to pneumococcus, which commonly lives in the upper respiratory tract of healthy children and only occasionally causes disease. These tissues are also being used to model pneumococcal infection in the laboratory to find out how the bacterium adheres to the epithelial cells of the nose and how it induces inflammatory responses. In collaboration with the paediatric respiratory team, the group plans to obtain cells from the noses of children undergoing bronchoscopy as well. This will further improve the models they can use.
Several projects are in progress examining the antibody responses in the saliva of infants and young children to vaccines against pneumococcus and also against meningococcus another important infectious agent in children. These antibodies help eliminate the bacteria from the nose and so reduce the risk of serious infection developing. Samples from studies done in centres all over the UK as well as in the US are sent to the laboratories in Bristol for analysis.
Clinical vaccine studies are also being planned in Bristol, including studies of pneumococcal vaccines in breast feeding mothers, who may then transfer protection to their infants in the milk, studies of similar vaccines in immunocompromised children and studies of new combination vaccines against meningitis in healthy infants.
March 2003