Active clinical trials for "Diarrhea"

This study is designed to compare the pharmacokinetics of four products used for treatment of acute diarrhea.

The purpose of the study is to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of Recombinant Human Lactoferrin Administered Orally for the Prevention of Antibiotic Associated Diarrhea in Adult Patients.

Children presenting for emergency department (ED) care with bloody diarrhea (i.e. hematochezia) represent a diagnostic challenge. Infectious enteric pathogens - Salmonella, Shigella and Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) - are at the top of the differential diagnosis list. STEC is of greatest concern because ~15% of infected children develop the Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS). Our team has demonstrated that antibiotic administration to STEC-infected children increases the risk of developing HUS while dehydration is associated with mortality. Rapidly identifying children with STEC infection can reduce unnecessary resource use in uninfected children while providing them to those with confirmed STEC infection. The study team will conduct a prospective ED-based study that will randomly allocate 60 children to either standard care as dictated by the treating physician or to the use of a 22-pathogen, nucleic acid based, 1-hour run time diagnostic test. The study team will evaluate the impact of testing on clinical resource use, clinical outcomes, costs and patient satisfaction.

Nosocomial diarrhea is a common problem.There are multiple ethiologies of nosocomial diarrhea in which can be divided into inflammatory and non inflammatory diarrhea. Fecal calprotectin is a good marker to identify inflammatory diarrhea in outpatient setting; for example, differentiating inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. Its performance in inpatient setting has not been well established. This study aim to determine the efficacy of fecal calprotectin in distinguishing inflammatory nosocomial diarrhea from non-inflammatory nosocomial diarrhea.

For more than a decade, Uganda's Ministry of Health has led a community health worker program model in which Village Health Teams (VHTs), cadres of unpaid volunteers, are assigned the task of delivering preventative health services and education to their local communities. Studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of Uganda's VHTs in improving certain health outcomes; however it is known that VHTs are not optimally supported, and there has been VHT attrition in recent years. The Ministry of Health has recognized the inadequate support of VHTs thus far and is aiming to "expand VHTs to all local governments and explore ways of sustaining VHTs." The objective of this study is to evaluate the extent to which material support is a deciding factor in the efficiency and durability of Uganda's VHT initiative. Material support may take the form of monetary stipends, regular payment, transportation assistance, or nonfinancial materials such as bicycles or mobile phone airtime. This study will review existing literature and gather novel data through surveys of VHT members and VHT stakeholders. The quantitative and qualitative survey data will be analyzed for trends that may point to a conclusion in the context of existing health policy discourse on community health worker remuneration. The purpose of this study is to strengthen the knowledge base on whether or not the current absence of material support significantly limits the potential for Uganda's VHTs to be sustained and expanded. This information can be used by governmental and non-governmental organizations in their work to strengthen and sustain VHTs throughout the country.

Through a four-year grant awarded to the University of California at Los Angeles in 2009, Dr. Brennan Spiegel served as a principal investigator (PI) for a project to develop and initially validate a bank of items to assess gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms for the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS). By the end of the grant period in July 2013, the project team had successfully developed and initially validated eight scales measuring the most common GI symptoms. Afterwards, Dr. Spiegel's PROMIS team joined forces with the UCLA Computing Technology Research Laboratory (CTRL) and the University of Michigan Center for Healthcare Communication Research to develop the Automated Evaluation of Gastrointestinal Symptoms (AEGIS) algorithm which is delivered via My GI Health, an open--source Internet based patient-provider portal (P3) designed to enhance the delivery of GI health care (www.MyGIHealth.org). Through My GI Health and AEGIS, patients are able to complete PROMIS GI symptom measures and provide additional information about their GI symptoms and histories from computers, tablets or smart phones without the constraints of physical locale. This information is condensed into a GI PROMIS scores report and initial GI history that patients' providers can review prior to or concurrent with seeing the patient. The report, which can be incorporated into the electronic health record (EHR), helps busy clinicians to quickly understand the patient's complaints, document their symptoms and GI history, and leaves more time for conversation with the patient. Beyond focusing their interaction, My GI Health also supports both the clinician and patient with an individualized "educational prescription" which guides the patient through a library of multi-media educational materials on GI symptoms, conditions, and treatments also contained within the website. The prescription is initially created by the website based on each patient's unique GI PROMIS "fingerprint", and can be modified by the provider based on their interaction with the patient. The clinician and patient can also access the PROMIS-tailored education in the exam room to jointly review pertinent materials, including animations of normal and abnormal GI functions, further reinforcing the patients' educational experiences around the PROMIS symptoms. The aim of this current study is to validate the use of GI PROMIS in clinical practice by conducting a pragmatic clinical trial (PCT) comparing delivery of GI PROMIS on a novel e--platform vs. usual care.

This study will assess how the current VHV (VHV=CHW, community health worker) scope can be expanded to include iCCM and if such group interventions can provide improved access to treatment for children. In rural SW Uganda, can iCCM provided by lay volunteers, increase the proportion of children with diarrhoea receiving ORS/Zn, ARI receiving anti-biotics, and fever/malaria receiving anti-malarials?

RATIONALE: A substantial proportion of children and teenagers with suspected inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) referred for endoscopy do not have the disease. The investigators designed a clinical decision rule that included a calprotectin stool test to discern which patients require further investigations. The accuracy of this diagnostic strategy is 88.5% with a low risk of missing IBD cases. Although the number of negative endoscopies was reduced after introduction of this strategy, still 22% of the referred children and teenagers underwent an unnecessary invasive test. S100A12 (calgranulin C) is a cytoplasmic protein secreted exclusively by activated neutrophils and this stool marker may be more IBD-specific than calprotectin. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether the specificity of S100A12 is superior to the specificity of calprotectin without sacrificing sensitivity HYPOTHESIS: Inclusion of the calgranulin C stool test will improve the specificity of the screening-strategy.

Zambia recently introduced routine infant immunization against rotavirus - the most important cause of severe gastroenteritis and diarrhoea mortality in children. Although vaccines like Rotarix are a cost effective tool against infectious diseases, live oral vaccines can be less immunogenic and efficacious in developing world settings as compared with industrialized countries. Reasons behind this phenomenon are not well understood, but may relate to continued maternal antigen exposure and high level maternal immunity that is passed to the foetus/newborn transplacentally and/or through breast milk. Therefore, three arising hypotheses include: (i) high-level rotavirus-specific maternal immunity (in the form of anti-rotavirus breast-milk immunoglobulin A (IgA) and transplacental serum IgG) is a major contributor to failed seroconversion following infant vaccination. (ii) Malnutrition negatively impacts infant immunity and increases the risk of post-vaccination rotavirus gastroenteritis. (iii) Introduction of rotavirus vaccine will alter the molecular epidemiology of circulating rotavirus strains detected in vaccinated children presenting with severe diarrhea. To address these hypotheses, the proposed study will recruit a prospective cohort of 420 mother-infant pairs. These will be enrolled at the time of vaccination and followed for up to four years. Baseline immunological status will be ascertained and seroconversion rates determined a month after full immunization. Incident rotavirus gastroenteritis will be monitored in the vaccinated infants whenever episodes of diarrhoea occur; through this surveillance, the sero-strains of rotaviruses causing disease will be tracked over the four year period. Contributions of HIV infection both in mothers and infants, vitamin A and zinc deficiency, weight for age Z-scores as well as mid upper arm circumference will also be assessed. Knowledge gained from this study will inform future interventional trials on strategies to improve rotavirus vaccine effectiveness in the developing world.

A therapeutic as well as preventive role of probiotics has been suggested from results of different studies using different probiotics that have been tested, usually lactic acid producing bacteria such as lactobacillus, bifidobacterium and streptococcus species. The supplementation of probiotics to infants may also have a prophylactic effect against acute diarrhoeal diseases. In the present proposal, we plan to examine if daily intake of a probiotic beverage, which includes 15 billion probiotic Lactobacilli, has a beneficial role in protecting children from infectious diarrhea in Kolkata. OBJECTIVES Primary objectives: To assess the impact of probiotics in the prevention of acute diarrhoeal diseases in children To assess the impact of probiotics on nutrition and growth of the children Secondary Objectives: Reduction in duration, frequency of diarrhoea Identification of pathogens causing diarrhoea Examination of faecal microflora STUDY DESIGN It will be a double blind randomized controlled field trial involving 4000 children aged between 1 and 5 years in an urban slum of Kolkata, India. The 4000 children will be identified through demographic survey. The study will be double blinded where the study arm will receive Probiotic drink, which includes 15 billion probiotic Lactobacilli, one bottle (65ml) daily (under supervision of a Health Worker) for 12 weeks and the control arm will receive a similar drink without the lactobacilli (Nutrient drink) daily for 12 weeks. Randomization will be done in a ratio of 1:1, i.e., the study arm and control arm will include 2000 children each. All the children under the study will be visited daily by a health worker who will supervise intake of Probiotic drink or Nutrient drink by the children. All the children will be followed up daily for 24weeks for identification of acute diarrhoea cases.