ACORN
A Clinically Oriented Antimicrobial Resistance Network (ACORN).
ACORN is a clinical AMR surveillance project led by the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) and the Oxford University of Oxford Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU). In collaboration with these teams, ACORN was launched by our University of Sydney study team at Philippine General Hospital, Manila, Philippines in 2023. This project focusses on active surveillance in one of the biggest and busiest neonatal intensive care and paediatric wards in the region, and provides an exciting opportunity for additional neonatal and paediatric data to be contributed to the ACORN database. This project is funded with support from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute (Sydney ID).
ACORN involves the implementation of a systematic and active surveillance program that evaluates both culture-negative and culture-positive sepsis cases, whilst also distinguishing between hospital- and community-acquired infections. Concurrently, this study enables a clear understanding of the interplay between clinical risk factors and outcomes following serious infections with the microbiological data causing those infections, to create a clearer picture of the impact of AMR on health outcomes in children.
Surveillance documents:
- Protocol: https://acornamr.net/docs/ACORN2_protocol_V2.0.pdf
- Surveillance manual: https://acornamr.net/docs/ACORN2_surveillance_manual_V3.0.pdf
- Case record forms: https://acornamr.net/docs/ACORN_CRFs.zip
Further reading:
- ACORN phase 1 results: https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/7-309
- ACORN concept: https://academic.oup.com/jacamr/article/2/1/dlaa018/5804106
- ACORN website: https://acornamr.net/#/./README