Browsing by Author "Evans, Scott R"
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Item Open Access A Desirability of Outcome Ranking Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial Comparing Seven Versus Fourteen Days of Antibiotics for Uncomplicated Gram-Negative Bloodstream Infection.(Open forum infectious diseases, 2022-06) Howard-Anderson, Jessica; Dai, Weixiao; Yahav, Dafna; Hamasaki, Toshimitsu; Turjeman, Adi; Koppel, Fidi; Franceschini, Erica; Hill, Carol; Sund, Zoë; Chambers, Henry F; Fowler, Vance G; Boucher, Helen W; Evans, Scott R; Paul, Mical; Holland, Thomas L; Doernberg, Sarah BBackground
Although a short course (7 days) of antibiotics has been demonstrated to be noninferior to a conventional course (14 days) in terms of mortality and infectious complications for patients with a Gram-negative bacterial bloodstream infection (GNB), it is unknown whether a shorter treatment duration can provide a better overall clinical outcome.Methods
We applied a bloodstream infection-specific desirability of outcome ranking (DOOR) analysis to the results of a previously completed, randomized controlled trial comparing short versus conventional course antibiotic therapy for hospitalized patients with uncomplicated GNB. We determined the probability that a randomly selected participant in the short course group would have a more desirable overall outcome than a participant in the conventional duration group. We performed (1) partial credit analyses allowing for calculated and variable weighting of DOOR ranks and (2) subgroup analyses to elucidate which patients may benefit the most from short durations of therapy.Results
For the 604 patients included in the original study (306 short course, 298 conventional course), the probability of having a more desirable outcome with a short course of antibiotics compared with a conventional course was 51.1% (95% confidence interval, 46.7% to 55.4%), indicating no significant difference. Partial credit analyses indicated that the DOOR results were similar across different patient preferences. Prespecified subgroup analyses using DOOR did not reveal significant differences between short and conventional courses of therapy.Conclusions
Both short and conventional durations of antibiotic therapy provide comparable clinical outcomes when using DOOR to consider benefits and risks of treatment options for GNB.Item Open Access Analytical Evaluation of the Abbott RealTime CT/NG Assay for Detection of Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Rectal and Pharyngeal Swabs.(The Journal of molecular diagnostics : JMD, 2020-06) Adamson, Paul C; Pandori, Mark W; Doernberg, Sarah B; Komarow, Lauren; Sund, Zoe; Tran, Thuy Tien T; Jensen, David; Tsalik, Ephraim L; Deal, Carolyn D; Chambers, Henry F; Fowler, Vance G; Evans, Scott R; Patel, Robin; Klausner, Jeffrey D; Antibacterial Resistance Leadership GroupChlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae infections in the rectum and pharynx are important extragenital reservoirs of infection. Few assays approved by the US Food and Drug Administration are commercially available to diagnose pharyngeal or rectal infections. The current study reports on the analytical performance of the Abbott RealTime CT/NG assay, including the limit of detection, inclusivity, and analytical specificity for C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae in rectal and pharyngeal specimens. The limit of detection was performed using known concentrations of organisms, elementary bodies per milliliter (EB/mL) for C. trachomatis and colony-forming units per milliliter (CFU/mL) for N. gonorrhoeae, in clinical rectal and pharyngeal swab matrices. Inclusivity was performed against 12 serovars of C. trachomatis and seven strains of N. gonorrhoeae. The analytical specificity was performed using 28 different bacteria and viruses. The limit of detection for C. trachomatis was 2.56 EB/mL in pharyngeal specimens and 12.8 EB/mL in rectal specimens. The limit of detection for N. gonorrhoeae was 0.0256 CFU/mL for both pharyngeal and rectal specimens. The inclusivity and analytical specificity were 100% for both rectal and pharyngeal specimens. These analytical performance data demonstrate that the Abbott CT/NG RealTime assay is an accurate, sensitive, and specific assay in rectal and pharyngeal specimens, supporting the potential of the assay for detection of rectal and pharyngeal C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae infections.Item Open Access Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group 2.0: Back to Business.(Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2021-08) Chambers, Henry F; Evans, Scott R; Patel, Robin; Cross, Heather R; Harris, Anthony D; Doi, Yohei; Boucher, Helen W; van Duin, David; Tsalik, Ephraim L; Holland, Thomas L; Pettigrew, Melinda M; Tamma, Pranita D; Hodges, Kathryn R; Souli, Maria; Fowler, Vance GIn December 2019, the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) was awarded funding for another 7-year cycle to support a clinical research network on antibacterial resistance. ARLG 2.0 has 3 overarching research priorities: infections caused by antibiotic-resistant (AR) gram-negative bacteria, infections caused by AR gram-positive bacteria, and diagnostic tests to optimize use of antibiotics. To support the next generation of AR researchers, the ARLG offers 3 mentoring opportunities: the ARLG Fellowship, Early Stage Investigator seed grants, and the Trialists in Training Program. The purpose of this article is to update the scientific community on the progress made in the original funding period and to encourage submission of clinical research that addresses 1 or more of the research priority areas of ARLG 2.0.Item Open Access Average Weighted Accuracy: Pragmatic Analysis for a Rapid Diagnostics in Categorizing Acute Lung Infections (RADICAL) Study.(Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2020-06) Liu, Ying; Tsalik, Ephraim L; Jiang, Yunyun; Ko, Emily R; Woods, Christopher W; Henao, Ricardo; Evans, Scott RPatient management relies on diagnostic information to identify appropriate treatment. Standard evaluations of diagnostic tests consist of estimating sensitivity, specificity, positive/negative predictive values, likelihood ratios, and accuracy. Although useful, these metrics do not convey the tests' clinical value, which is critical to informing decision-making. Full appreciation of the clinical impact of a diagnostic test requires analyses that integrate sensitivity and specificity, account for the disease prevalence within the population of test application, and account for the relative importance of specificity vs sensitivity by considering the clinical implications of false-positive and false-negative results. We developed average weighted accuracy (AWA), representing a pragmatic metric of diagnostic yield or global utility of a diagnostic test. AWA can be used to compare test alternatives, even across different studies. We apply the AWA methodology to evaluate a new diagnostic test developed in the Rapid Diagnostics in Categorizing Acute Lung Infections (RADICAL) study.Item Open Access Efficacy and safety of azithromycin versus placebo to treat lower respiratory tract infections associated with low procalcitonin: a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, non-inferiority trial.(The Lancet. Infectious diseases, 2023-04) Tsalik, Ephraim L; Rouphael, Nadine G; Sadikot, Ruxana T; Rodriguez-Barradas, Maria C; McClain, Micah T; Wilkins, Dana M; Woods, Christopher W; Swamy, Geeta K; Walter, Emmanuel B; El Sahly, Hana M; Keitel, Wendy A; Mulligan, Mark J; Tuyishimire, Bonifride; Serti, Elisavet; Hamasaki, Toshimitsu; Evans, Scott R; Ghazaryan, Varduhi; Lee, Marina S; Lautenbach, Ebbing; TRAP-LRTI Study Group; Antibacterial Resistance Leadership GroupBackground
Lower respiratory tract infections are frequently treated with antibiotics, despite a viral cause in many cases. It remains unknown whether low procalcitonin concentrations can identify patients with lower respiratory tract infection who are unlikely to benefit from antibiotics. We aimed to compare the efficacy and safety of azithromycin versus placebo to treat lower respiratory tract infections in patients with low procalcitonin.Methods
We conducted a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, non-inferiority trial at five health centres in the USA. Adults aged 18 years or older with clinically suspected non-pneumonia lower respiratory tract infection and symptom duration from 24 h to 28 days were eligible for enrolment. Participants with a procalcitonin concentration of 0·25 ng/mL or less were randomly assigned (1:1), in blocks of four with stratification by site, to receive over-encapsulated oral azithromycin 250 mg or matching placebo (two capsules on day 1 followed by one capsule daily for 4 days). Participants, non-study clinical providers, investigators, and study coordinators were masked to treatment allocation. The primary outcome was efficacy of azithromycin versus placebo in terms of clinical improvement at day 5 in the intention-to-treat population. The non-inferiority margin was -12·5%. Solicited adverse events (abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, allergic reaction, or yeast infections) were recorded as a secondary outcome. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03341273.Findings
Between Dec 8, 2017, and March 9, 2020, 691 patients were assessed for eligibility and 499 were enrolled and randomly assigned to receive azithromycin (n=249) or placebo (n=250). Clinical improvement at day 5 was observed in 148 (63%, 95% CI 54 to 71) of 238 participants with full data in the placebo group and 155 (69%, 61 to 77) of 227 participants with full data in the azithromycin group in the intention-to-treat analysis (between-group difference -6%, 95% CI -15 to 2). The 95% CI for the difference did not meet the non-inferiority margin. Solicited adverse events and the severity of solicited adverse events were not significantly different between groups at day 5, except for increased abdominal pain associated with azithromycin (47 [23%, 95% CI 18 to 29] of 204 participants) compared with placebo (35 [16%, 12 to 21] of 221; between-group difference -7% [95% CI -15 to 0]; p=0·066).Interpretation
Placebo was not non-inferior to azithromycin in terms of clinical improvement at day 5 in adults with lower respiratory tract infection and a low procalcitonin concentration. After accounting for both the rates of clinical improvement and solicited adverse events at day 5, it is unclear whether antibiotics are indicated for patients with lower respiratory tract infection and a low procalcitonin concentration.Funding
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, bioMérieux.Item Open Access Improving Traditional Registrational Trial End Points: Development and Application of a Desirability of Outcome Ranking End Point for Complicated Urinary Tract Infection Clinical Trials.(Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2023-02) Howard-Anderson, Jessica; Hamasaki, Toshimitsu; Dai, Weixiao; Collyar, Deborah; Rubin, Daniel; Nambiar, Sumathi; Kinamon, Tori; Hill, Carol; Gelone, Steven P; Mariano, David; Baba, Takamichi; Holland, Thomas L; Doernberg, Sarah B; Chambers, Henry F; Fowler, Vance G; Evans, Scott R; Boucher, Helen WBackground
Traditional end points used in registrational randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) often do not allow for complete interpretation of the full range of potential clinical outcomes. Desirability of outcome ranking (DOOR) is an approach to the design and analysis of clinical trials that incorporates benefits and risks of novel treatment strategies and provides a global assessment of patient experience.Methods
Through a multidisciplinary committee of experts in infectious diseases, clinical trial design, drug regulation, and patient experience, we developed a DOOR end point for infectious disease syndromes and demonstrated how this could be applied to 3 registrational drug trials (ZEUS, APEKS-cUTI, and DORI-05) for complicated urinary tract infections (cUTIs). ZEUS compared fosfomycin to piperacillin/tazobactam, APEKS-cUTI compared cefiderocol to imipenem, and DORI-05 compared doripenem to levofloxacin. Using DOOR, we estimated the probability of a more desirable outcome with each investigational antibacterial drug.Results
In each RCT, the DOOR distribution was similar and the probability that a patient in the investigational arm would have a more desirable outcome than a patient in the control arm had a 95% confidence interval containing 50%, indicating no significant difference between treatment arms. DOOR facilitated improved understanding of potential trade-offs between clinical efficacy and safety. Partial credit and subgroup analyses also highlight unique attributes of DOOR.Conclusions
DOOR can effectively be used in registrational cUTI trials. The DOOR end point presented here can be adapted for other infectious disease syndromes and prospectively incorporated into future clinical trials.Item Open Access Presenting Risks and Benefits: Helping the Data Monitoring Committee Do Its Job(Annals of Internal Medicine) Evans, Scott R; Bigelow, Robert; Chuang-Stein, Christy; Ellenberg, Susan S; Gallo, Paul; He, Weili; Jiang, Qi; Rockhold, FrankItem Open Access Prospective Validation of a Rapid Host Gene Expression Test to Discriminate Bacterial From Viral Respiratory Infection.(JAMA network open, 2022-04) Ko, Emily R; Henao, Ricardo; Frankey, Katherine; Petzold, Elizabeth A; Isner, Pamela D; Jaehne, Anja K; Allen, Nakia; Gardner-Gray, Jayna; Hurst, Gina; Pflaum-Carlson, Jacqueline; Jayaprakash, Namita; Rivers, Emanuel P; Wang, Henry; Ugalde, Irma; Amanullah, Siraj; Mercurio, Laura; Chun, Thomas H; May, Larissa; Hickey, Robert W; Lazarus, Jacob E; Gunaratne, Shauna H; Pallin, Daniel J; Jambaulikar, Guruprasad; Huckins, David S; Ampofo, Krow; Jhaveri, Ravi; Jiang, Yunyun; Komarow, Lauren; Evans, Scott R; Ginsburg, Geoffrey S; Tillekeratne, L Gayani; McClain, Micah T; Burke, Thomas W; Woods, Christopher W; Tsalik, Ephraim L; Antibacterial Resistance Leadership GroupImportance
Bacterial and viral causes of acute respiratory illness (ARI) are difficult to clinically distinguish, resulting in the inappropriate use of antibacterial therapy. The use of a host gene expression-based test that is able to discriminate bacterial from viral infection in less than 1 hour may improve care and antimicrobial stewardship.Objective
To validate the host response bacterial/viral (HR-B/V) test and assess its ability to accurately differentiate bacterial from viral infection among patients with ARI.Design, setting, and participants
This prospective multicenter diagnostic study enrolled 755 children and adults with febrile ARI of 7 or fewer days' duration from 10 US emergency departments. Participants were enrolled from October 3, 2014, to September 1, 2019, followed by additional enrollment of patients with COVID-19 from March 20 to December 3, 2020. Clinical adjudication of enrolled participants identified 616 individuals as having bacterial or viral infection. The primary analysis cohort included 334 participants with high-confidence reference adjudications (based on adjudicator concordance and the presence of an identified pathogen confirmed by microbiological testing). A secondary analysis of the entire cohort of 616 participants included cases with low-confidence reference adjudications (based on adjudicator discordance or the absence of an identified pathogen in microbiological testing). Thirty-three participants with COVID-19 were included post hoc.Interventions
The HR-B/V test quantified the expression of 45 host messenger RNAs in approximately 45 minutes to derive a probability of bacterial infection.Main outcomes and measures
Performance characteristics for the HR-B/V test compared with clinical adjudication were reported as either bacterial or viral infection or categorized into 4 likelihood groups (viral very likely [probability score <0.19], viral likely [probability score of 0.19-0.40], bacterial likely [probability score of 0.41-0.73], and bacterial very likely [probability score >0.73]) and compared with procalcitonin measurement.Results
Among 755 enrolled participants, the median age was 26 years (IQR, 16-52 years); 360 participants (47.7%) were female, and 395 (52.3%) were male. A total of 13 participants (1.7%) were American Indian, 13 (1.7%) were Asian, 368 (48.7%) were Black, 131 (17.4%) were Hispanic, 3 (0.4%) were Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 297 (39.3%) were White, and 60 (7.9%) were of unspecified race and/or ethnicity. In the primary analysis involving 334 participants, the HR-B/V test had sensitivity of 89.8% (95% CI, 77.8%-96.2%), specificity of 82.1% (95% CI, 77.4%-86.6%), and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 97.9% (95% CI, 95.3%-99.1%) for bacterial infection. In comparison, the sensitivity of procalcitonin measurement was 28.6% (95% CI, 16.2%-40.9%; P < .001), the specificity was 87.0% (95% CI, 82.7%-90.7%; P = .006), and the NPV was 87.6% (95% CI, 85.5%-89.5%; P < .001). When stratified into likelihood groups, the HR-B/V test had an NPV of 98.9% (95% CI, 96.1%-100%) for bacterial infection in the viral very likely group and a positive predictive value of 63.4% (95% CI, 47.2%-77.9%) for bacterial infection in the bacterial very likely group. The HR-B/V test correctly identified 30 of 33 participants (90.9%) with acute COVID-19 as having a viral infection.Conclusions and relevance
In this study, the HR-B/V test accurately discriminated bacterial from viral infection among patients with febrile ARI and was superior to procalcitonin measurement. The findings suggest that an accurate point-of-need host response test with high NPV may offer an opportunity to improve antibiotic stewardship and patient outcomes.Item Open Access Simultaneous Evaluation of Diagnostic Assays for Pharyngeal and Rectal Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis Using a Master Protocol.(Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2020-12) Doernberg, Sarah B; Komarow, Lauren; Tran, Thuy Tien T; Sund, Zoe; Pandori, Mark W; Jensen, David; Tsalik, Ephraim L; Deal, Carolyn D; Chambers, Henry F; Fowler, Vance G; Evans, Scott R; Patel, Robin; Klausner, Jeffrey DBackground
Pharyngeal and rectal Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis play important roles in infection and antibacterial resistance transmission, but no US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-cleared assays for detection at these sites existed prior to this study. The objective was to estimate performance of assays to detect those infections in pharyngeal and rectal specimens to support regulatory submission.Methods
We performed a cross-sectional, single-visit study of adults seeking sexually transmitted infection testing at 9 clinics in 7 states. We collected pharyngeal and rectal swabs from participants. The primary outcome was positive and negative percent agreement for detection of N. gonorrhoeae and C. trachomatis for 3 investigational assays compared to a composite reference. Secondary outcomes included positivity as well as positive and negative predictive values and likelihood ratios. Subgroup analyses included outcomes by symptom status and sex.Results
A total of 2598 participants (79% male) underwent testing. We observed N. gonorrhoeae positivity of 8.1% in the pharynx and 7.9% in the rectum and C. trachomatis positivity of 2.0% in the pharynx and 8.7% in the rectum. Positive percent agreement ranged from 84.8% to 96.5% for different anatomic site infection combinations, whereas negative percent agreement was 98.8% to 99.6%.Conclusions
This study utilized a Master Protocol to generate diagnostic performance data for multiple assays from different manufacturers in a single study population, which ultimately supported first-in-class FDA clearance for extragenital assays. We observed very good positive percent agreement when compared to a composite reference method for the detection of both pharyngeal and rectal N. gonorrhoeae and C. trachomatis.Clinical trials registration
NCT02870101.Item Open Access The Impact of Landscape Changes on Data and Safety Monitoring Board Oversight of Clinical Trials(NEJM Evidence, 2022-08-23) Abebe, Kaleab Z; Rockhold, Frank W