International study examines clindamycin’s effectiveness in reducing preterm births
Christiana Care has received a $400,000 grant from the Thrasher Research Fund to study of the effectiveness of an antibiotic known as oral clindamycin to avert preterm births in women with genital tract infections linked to preterm delivery. Christiana Care received the award in partnership with KLE University’s Jawaharlal Nehru Medical Collage (JNMC) in Karnataka, India.
The Thrasher Research Fund, headquartered in Salt Lake City, supports novel pediatric medical research that offers substantial promise to advance infants’ and children’s health and survival. The study will examine whether a five-day dose of 300 mg oral clindamycin for women who are 13 to 20 weeks pregnant will prevent 30 percent of preterm deliveries at minimum.
The research will be conducted in South India, an area that accounts for the greatest number of global newborn deaths, 27 percent of which are caused by preterm births. The study will be the first to test whether oral clindamycin prevents preterm births in a community-based, developing-country setting, where most of the annual 3.1 million newborn deaths occur. The study results will have broad-based applications to the United States and Europe, where the incidence of preterm births is also high and increasing.
Matthew Hoffman, M.D., the vice chairman of Christiana Care’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Division of Education and Research, is the study’s principal investigator. Mrutyunjaya B. Bellad, M.D., professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at JMMC’s KLE University, is the co-principal investigator of the study. Key members include: Nancy Sloan, DrPH, senior clinical researcher, Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Christiana Care Health System; Richard J. Derman, M.D., MPH, FACOG, Marie E. Pinizzotto, M.D., Endowed Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Christiana Care; and Shivaprasad S. Goudar, M.D., MHPE, professor and head, Dept. of Physiology, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College.