New Developments in Antiinfective Agents in Paediatrics

Call for Papers

Most new anti-infectives when entering into markets have not undergone clinical trials in children, and thus there is almost no information on dosing and safety of the drug in paediatric population. However, in last two decades, there have been several new developments in this area. First in USA and then in European Union regulations have been put on place that mandate pharmaceutical industry to present paediatric data when the new agents are presented to regulators or at least have a plan how to develop this drug for paediatric population. The older agents without patent protection could be studied on the initiative of the pharmaceutical industry. In addition, a number of grants have been given by the European Community's 7th framework program.

The focus of this issue is on anti-infective agents including vaccines. We invite researchers to contribute original research articles as well as reviews that will improve our understanding on regulatory, ethical, and scientific challenges of new paediatric initiatives. We would specifically encourage submitting articles on innovative study designs in order to accelerate paediatric drug development and reduce the number of study subjects without losing in quality. The reviews and analyses on paediatric needs of new data on anti-infectives, antifungals, antivirals, and vaccines are also encouraged. We are especially interested in the results of studies completed as a request of new paediatric regulations. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Pharmacokinetics, efficacy, and safety of new antibiotics, antivirals, and antifungals
• Issues in designing and conducting clinical trials with anti-infective agents in children including neonates
• Critical review of off-patent anti-infective agents for which the paediatric data are urgently needed
• New antiretrovirals for paediatric use including those with potential use in mother-to-child transmission of HIV
• Prevention and treatment of influenza
• Model-based development of new anti-infectives in paediatrics including computer-based simulations, structure analysis of drugs, and application of bioinformatics
• Development of new vaccines and in-depth reviews on existing vaccines from the paediatric perspective
• New anti-infective agents for paediatric outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy
• Use of biomarkers assessing efficacy and safety of drugs and vaccines in children
• New developments in antimicrobial treatment of rheumatic fever and childhood tuberculosis

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ipid/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:

Lead Guest Editor

• Irja Lutsar, Department of Medical Microbiology, University of Tartu, Estonia

Guest Editors

• Marta Granström, Department of Microbiology, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
• Mike Sharland, Paediatric Infectious Diseases Unit, St. George's Hospital NHS Trust, London, UK