NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre
Enabling translational research through partnership
E. coli is a type of bacteria that commonly causes infections. When it gets into a patient’s blood it can cause very severe infections and there is up to around a 20% chance that patients will die despite medical treatment. A vaccine to prevent severe disease caused by E. coli is currently in ... READ MORE
Babies in the first month of life (neonates) are very vulnerable to bacterial infections, which require antibiotics as treatment. Increasingly bacterial infections are harder to treat, a problem known as antibiotic resistance. Some forms of antibiotic resistance occur because bacteria can share ... READ MORE
Since June 2011, every bloodstream infection caused by a bacteria called Escherichia coli (E. coli) has to be reported to the UK Health Security Agency. Monthly counts are published regularly, as well as annual reports describing the overall trend, distribution by age and sex, and geographic ... READ MORE
Respiratory viral pathogens have long been known to be responsible for a large burden of seasonal acute paediatric emergency department presentations. We are investigating the local epidemiology of these viral agents which prompt emergency department presentation. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has ... READ MORE
Respiratory viral infections can cause serious illnesses in patients with weakened immune systems, such as those who have undergone a bone marrow transplant, or are undergoing chemotherapy for blood cancers. The Haematology department at Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) routinely tests for these ... READ MORE
Antibiotics are commonly used to treat infections, but they may also affect how other infections are detected and transmitted. MRSA is a potentially serious healthcare-associated infection. Over the past decade there has been major progress in reducing the number of patients who carry MRSA on their ... READ MORE
Every year, influenza virus causes significant illness globally. Many people are admitted to the John Radcliffe hospital with the virus and tested using molecular test. Currently, we do not use all the information that the test provides. This study aims to use the extra information from the current ... READ MORE
There are increasing numbers of reports of micro-organisms that can cause human infections being found in wastewater environments, like sinks, drains and toilets. These could potentially be transmitted to unwell people in hospitals. However, whether this really occurs is unclear. We have sequenced ... READ MORE
Every year influenza (‘flu’) puts a major strain on UK hospitals. Whilst many patients are admitted with influenza, other patients can get it during their hospital stay. This is because it is very easy to transmit, and it is not always obvious who has flu. We are using genetic sequencing to work out ... READ MORE
Across England, the number of bloodstream infections caused by a group of bacteria which include ‘Esherichia coli’ (E. coli) and ‘Klebsiella pneuomoniae’ (K. pneumoniae) has been rising significantly for the last few years. A recent investigation by our group using the IORD database has in addition ... READ MORE
Across England, the number of infections caused by a family of bacteria called Streptococcus have been rising strongly for the last few years. However, the reasons behind these increases are not well understood at the moment. We plan to use the extra information in the IORD database to look at ... READ MORE
Antibiotics are prescribed when sick patients arrive at hospital, before doctors know what kind of bacteria is causing an infection and what antibiotics it might be resistant to. Even when a bacteria is identified as causing an infection, it is labelled as “resistant” (R) or “susceptible” (S) based ... READ MORE
Recently a fungus called Candida auris, resistant to multiple antifungal treatments, emerged globally. It is related to the family that causes thrush, Candida albicans, but behaves differently, usually infecting or colonizing patients in intensive care facilities. This organism is now colonizing ... READ MORE
Across England, the number of bloodstream infections caused by a bacteria called ‘Esherichia coli’ (E. coli) have been rising strongly for the last few years. However, the reasons behind these increases are not well understood at the moment. We plan to use the extra information in the IORD database ... READ MORE
Antibiotics are medicines that are hugely important in treating many infections, and antibiotic resistance is a major clinical problem. Research has shown that increased use of antibiotics, whether appropriate or inappropriate, seems to be associated with higher numbers of antibiotic-resistant ... READ MORE
Our knowledge of resistance of bacteria, such as E. coli, to antibiotic drugs is incomplete. An understanding of how such resistance is passed on from generation to generation of bacteria is important in helping us to determine which drugs should be given to patients, and in helping us formulate new ... READ MORE
This project focusses on patients who do not recover straightaway from C. difficile, but in whom either initial treatment for the infection does not work, or in whom the infection comes back (termed “recurrence” of infection). We want to work how often C. difficile recurrence happens, and how long ... READ MORE
This project aims to estimate the incidence of C. difficile infection in Oxfordshire, inside and outside hospitals (inpatient, outpatient/day case/A&E, community), over calendar time, analysing the trends to identify potential new strains (as measured by multi-locus sequence type, MLST) ... READ MORE
See publication: Probabilistic transmission models incorporating sequencing data for healthcare-associated Clostridioides difficile outperform heuristic rules and identify strain-specific differences in transmission ... READ MORE
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Summary of findings: In an endemic setting, with well-implemented infection control measures, ward-based contact with other patients with C. difficile diarrhoea cannot account for the majority of new cases – no more than 25% of new cases in Oxfordshire over 2 years could be linked to a previous ... READ MORE
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Summary of findings: Rates of MRSA infection in blood and other sites were falling before intensification of infection-control measures in 2006. This, together with strain-specific changes in MRSA isolation, strongly suggests that incompletely understood biological factors are responsible for the ... READ MORE
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Summary of findings: Trends in the rates of serious bloodstream infections caused by antibiotic-sensitive microbes were similar between 1998-2007 across 14 hospitals in Europe, but rates of serious bloodstream infections caused by antibiotic-resistant microbes increased much more in hospitals in ... READ MORE
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