EURECA Study Update: One Third of Patients Enrolled!

The EURECA study keeps growing in a solid and promising way as a result of the high commitment and effort of all partners and investigators. With over 600 patients currently included, the team is proud to report that one-third of the patients estimated have already been included to date.

Most of the participating sites have been activated and in almost all of them the recruitment has been initiated with an adequate geographical distribution of inclusions, ensuring the proper representation of all included countries. To achieve a significant paediatric population, 4 experienced paediatric centers have been included in addition to the previously participating centers.

A multicentre, multinational, analytical observational project was designed, comprising 3 different sub-studies inside EURECA study:

– Study 1 (a prospective cohort study) will characterise the features, clinical management and outcomes of hospitalised patients with intra-abdominal infection, pneumonia, complicated urinary tract infections and bloodstream infections caused by CRE (202 patients in each group). The main outcomes will be 30-day all-cause mortality and clinical response;

– Study 2 (a nested case–control study) will identify the risk factors for target infections caused by CRE; 248 selected patients from study 1 will be matched with patients with Carbapenems-susceptible Enterobacteriaceae (1:1) and with hospitalised patients (1:3) and will provide a historical cohort of patients with CRE infections;

– Study 3 (a matched cohort study) will follow patients in study 2 in order to assess mortality, length of stay and hospital costs associated with CRE.

The EURECA team is pleased to announce that the recruitment is being adequate for each of them and is convinced that the target goals for all of them will be achieved. The study protocol is already published in the BMJ Open journal, being accessible to the entire community. You can read it here.

In the coming months an interim analysis will be started and the preliminary results will be communicated soon after.

The communication and collaboration between all COMBACTE collaborators, partners, national coordinators, and research teams is excellent. This proves the enormous value of the COMBACTE network, and the reality that through it any objectives set forth can be achieved. The information provided by the study is interesting not only for the scientific community, but also for the global community.