We have made a photos gallery of PERFORM and EUCLIDS partners at ESPID 2019. There is also a photos gallery of the partners at RCPCH 2019.
The 37th Annual Meeting of ESPID took place from May 6–11 in Ljubljana, Slovenia which brought together thousands of clinicians, researchers, residents, and students. It was a very special meeting on this occasion as the head of the Slovenia branch for PERFORM, Marko Pokorn (University Medical Centre, Ljubljana) was the co-chair of ESPID2019.
ESPID2019 showcased the latest research and developments in the paediatrics field and amongst all the international experts were many of our researchers who presented on the results from the EUCLIDS project (precursor to PERFORM) and the current research and work in PERFORM. As usual for this ESPID-born consortium, the clinical partners of PERFORM held a parallel meeting to review the status of the project and the upcoming next targets.
Along with the selected oral and poster presentations from members of the team, PERFORM’s invited speakers included Dr Myrsini Kaforou and Dr Jethro Herberg from the Imperial College London team. Myrsini presented to a full house with “Diagnostic and prognostic transcriptomics biomarkers in infection” as part of the ESCMID/ESPID Joint symposium,- Novelties in diagnostic microbiology in paediatrics. Jethro followed suit in the Infection or Inflammation? symposium delivering the opening session titled “Infection or inflammation - can we make diagnosis more rapidly?”. Prof. Federico Martinòn-Torres from Santiago de Compostela led a debate on the usefulness of clinical guidelines for the management of respiratory infections, while Dr Luregn Schlapbach from the University of Queensland gave a talk on “What is new in paediatric sepsis?”. Also, PERFORM’s partners from Servizo Galego De Saude presented “A QPCR assay of 1-transcript expression signature in host differentiates viral from bacterial infections in febrile children”. This included the results that the assay was able to efficiently discriminate viral from bacterial infections.
To top off these amazing presentations, Dr. Navin Boeddha, clinical member of EUCLIDS, won the prestigious Paediatric Infectious Disease Journal (PIDJ) award for the 2018 best published paper. Navin won for his study 'HLA-DR Expression on Monocyte Subsets in Critically Ill Children' which was presented by Prof Steve Black, Editor-in-Chief of PIDJ.
After such a jam-packed schedule, the team were at it again one week later. Held in Birmingham, UK on 13-15 May 2019, the EUCLIDS and PERFORM consortium presenting at RCPCH 2019.
Along with Myrsini and Jethro at the RCPCH 2019 were Professor Mike Levin and Dr Aubrey Cunnington. Together they delivered “Bringing Personalised Medicine to All Children” which focussed on how personalised medicine approaches are likely to change the practice of paediatric medicine in the next decade. The symposium was attended by a very engaged audience and even thought time ran out, many stayed back afterwards to ask more questions.
Aubrey summed up the session succinctly saying, “both common and rare genetic variants determine susceptibility to infectious diseases...understanding genetics helps us understand why a child gets an infection and perhaps whether they will get other infections”.
It was great to see these EU-funded research projects receive so much exposure at these large international conferences and even moreso the great people behind all the hard work in reaching the project milestones. We look forward to the next one.
