Children's Hospital and Pitt School of Medicine Receive $8.2 million Grant from NIH

Researchers at Children’s Hospital and Pitt’s School of Medicine have received an $8.2 million dollar grant to study antibiotic resistance in children.

The most frequent reason to prescribe an antibiotic to a child is acute otitis media—an ear infection. Dr. Alejandro Hoberman, Chief of Academic Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital, says not many new antibiotics are being developed and some children don’t respond to first and second line antibiotics available now. Hoberman says doctors are then stuck with injectable antibiotics or even draining the eardrum, so there are not many options for treating children with ear infections from drug resistant organisms.

600 children will be studied over five years to see if a 5-day course of antibiotics rather than the standard 10-day course can produce the same outcome with less drug resistance.