The Results
Key findings
The PediCAP trial would like to thank the children, their families and caregivers for participating in the trial and contributing to the advancement of care of children with severe and very severe pneumonia.
PediCAP is the first large MAMS-ROCI clinical trial, a novel approach developed by the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL. This innovative trial design allows researchers to test different antibiotic options taken over different durations.
The trial found that switching children in hospital with pneumonia to oral antibiotics when their health improves is safe and works just as well as staying on injectable antibiotics for five days.
Both oral antibiotics were equally effective, but amoxicillin is a better choice as it is more affordable and readily available.
PediCAP also compared how well children recovered with different lengths of antibiotic treatment, ranging from four to eight days in total. They found that all shorter lengths were just as good as eight days of treatment. Generally, four days of treatment was enough for most children.
On average, children who switched to oral antibiotics had a shorter hospital stay by one day compared with those who stayed on injectable antibiotics. This strategy could establish a more convenient and equally effective alternative to the WHO’s current treatment recommendations, meaning children can return home from hospital sooner.