The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) is the largest academic and research center in Greece. Its medical school contains two NICU’s in two different tertiary-care hospitals in Thessaloniki with a great number of admissions of very-low-birth weight neonates per year. Prof. V. Drossou-Agakidou is Head of the 1st Dept of Neonatology, Hippokration Hospital. The Neonatal Department has a very active program in the immunology of neonatal sepsis and the susceptibility of the VLBW neonates to the infection and has extensively published on this topic. In addition to the faculty of the Department, a number of trainees in neonatology and PhD students are active in the Department and on research concerning neonatal infections and immunology. The NICU participates in various multi-centre clinical studies, and members of its faculty have deep interest in the study of neonatal sepsis and its mechanisms (including immunology and host defences, horizontal transmission, etc). The Infectious Diseases Unit (headed by Assoc. Prof. E. Roilides) is in best collaboration with the neonatal departments and works with them. A research infectious disease laboratory of Aristotle University supports this collaboration. The paediatric infectious diseases unit and the laboratory hosts 5 PhD-students working on various aspects of infections mostly in the laboratory.
This partner will participate and contribute to the work packages WP2 (late-onset sepsis trial) and WP3 (meningitis trial implementation) with a large number of septic episodes as well as providing samples for WP5, WP6 and WP7.
AUTH will coordinate the participation in Neomero of 2 NICUs in the Thessaloniki area, estimating to see about 50 Late onset Sepsis per year and about 4 cases of neonatal meningitis.