HIV, hepatitis, meningitis, pneumonia and many more illnesses that are investigated at the SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital have one thing in common: they are infectious diseases. Some of them can be prevented with vaccinations, but if they are not diagnosed and treated on time, they can be fatal.
There is one particular infectious disease that has had a huge impact on the whole world, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which caused a worldwide pandemic in 2020. As a leading healthcare facility in pediatric research, the SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital played, and continues to play today, a key role in the fight against COVID-19.
Main lines of investigation
Kids Corona is an open-access platform where researchers, healthcare professionals and regular citizens from all over the world can combine efforts to find out incidence, impact and transmission rates of COVID-19 in children and pregnant people.
Kids Corona, a platform for understanding COVID-19
Kids Corona is an open-access platform where researchers from all over the world, healthcare workers and the general public put their thoughts together to better understand the rate, impact and scope of the spread of COVID-19 in children and pregnant women.
Thanks to this, we have been able to answer some crucial questions such as:
- Are children infected?: At the outset, it was thought that children were not infected because of the low rates of infection among them across the world. However, a study conducted with more than 1,500 families revealed that they were in fact being infected in the same proportion as adults.
- Are they spreaders?: Thanks to a pioneering trial at our hospital, we know that they are spreaders, but that they are 6 times less likely to pass the disease on, and that contagion is lower the younger a child is.
- How are pregnant women and newly born babies affected?: We conducted a study on more than 700 pregnant women that demonstrated that there was no vertical transmission of coronavirus from mothers to fetuses and that pregnant women were not at greater risk.
However, our work to continue finding out more about this virus has not stopped. Our researchers are now working to find out why the response is different in children than it is in adults. Children could be the key to combatting COVID-19 and thus protect the whole of society.
Our body is colonised by millions of microorganisms from birth. Some of them have a continuous symbiotic relationship with our skin, our digestive tract, our upper airways or with many other tissues in our body.
Microorganisms
Our body is colonised by millions of microorganisms from birth. Some of them have an ongoing symbiotic relationship with our skin, our digestive tract, our upper airways or with many other tissues in our body.
Fortunately, the majority of these ‘micro-colonisers’ are good for our health. But there are also infection-causing pathogens. At the SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital, we study both types of microorganisms and how they interact.
In terms of pathogenic microorganisms, our efforts are focused on studying the bacteria that cause pneumonia and whooping cough, with several key objectives:
- To develop simple, rapid diagnostic techniques to allow us to treat infections as quickly as possible. Early diagnosis can be a key factor in increasing survival rates.
- To study factors predisposing patients to infection, such as improper antibiotic use, and infection prevention measures, like vaccinations.
- To study how to prevent whooping cough in babies through maternal vaccination during pregnancy.
Research on good microorganisms is more recent. Thanks to the information gleaned from next-generation sequencing techniques, we now know that the types of microorganisms colonising our bodies depend on several factors, such as whether birth is vaginal or Caesarean, or whether the baby is fed breastmilk or baby formula.
The differences in composition between these microorganisms or microbiota have a direct impact on our future health.
Our researchers are investigating how our lifestyle affects these microorganisms, and how good and bad microorganisms interact in response to infections and other diseases.
Each year, 140,000 children around the world die from tuberculosis. Although we have had medications for decades to combat this disease, they come in tablet form, which many children struggle to take, making adjusting dosages for each patient much more difficult. That is why our researchers are working towards finding new formulae that are suitable for young patients.
Adolescents who contracted the HIV virus at birth from their HIV positive mother have spent years taking medication and must continue to do so for the rest of their lives. At the SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital, we are studying the long-term effects of these treatments.
There are other less-known viruses out there such as cytomegalovirus, which can have severe consequences for newborns if the mother contracts this virus during pregnancy. The most common is deafness. At the SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital, we work to detect these cases as early as possible, not only to prevent complications, but also to start treatment early and improve the quality of life of these children.