PNEUmonia DOSing in Critically Ill Patients (PNEUDOS)

Plain-language summary

Pneumonia is the most common infection in intensive care unit (ICU) patients and occurs in 10% of all ICU admissions. Unfortunately, ICU patient outcomes remain poor with a high mortality rate associated with pneumonia despite recent therapeutic advances. Previous studies of antibiotics used in ICU patients, which includes ceftriaxone, meropenem and piperacillin/tazobactam, have quantified major differences in pharmacokinetics (PK) between ICU and non-ICU patients, with ICU patients displaying a unique spectrum of plasma concentration-time profiles. These PK differences can lead to suboptimal antibiotic concentrations in blood, which have been associated with a reduced likelihood of clinical cure for pneumonia. Furthermore, highlighting the importance of optimised dosing for pneumonia is that multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogens emerge during antibiotic therapy in approximately half of the ICU patients, frequently emerging from the lung. Previous work has highlighted how infection site concentrations determine patient outcome. For pneumonia, the infection site is best described as the epithelial lining fluid (ELF) in the lung. Although optimal antibiotic therapy should be considered a priority for ICU patients with pneumonia to improve the persisting poor outcomes, the dosing regimens that can achieve therapeutic concentrations at the infection site (i.e., ELF) in ICU patients with pneumonia remain unknown. The PNEUDOS study aims to address this significant knowledge gap by defining novel individualised dosing regimens that can maximise antibiotic efficacy by achieving therapeutic concentrations in the blood and ELF of ICU patients with pneumonia. These dosing regimens can then be validated in future clinical trials.

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