Grant awarded for study of Kawasaki disease

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute issued a $2 million grant for researchers to study treatment options for children with Kawasaki disease who are resistant to initial therapy, according to a press release.

About 10% to 20% of children with Kawasaki disease are resistant to the initial therapy of IV immunoglobulin. There are no current guidelines for secondary treatment, according to the release from the University of California, San Diego.

The researchers from University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego and Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at University of California, Davis will analyze the effectiveness of the two common secondary treatments: more immunoglobulin or infliximab, an engineered antibody that inactivates a molecule that promotes inflammation.

“After talking to more than 100 parents, clinicians and researchers, we learned that their top priority for research is to test the effectiveness of treatments to prevent heart damage in this fragile patient population,” Jane Burns, MD, professor of pediatrics at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, said in the release. “Our findings will further Kawasaki disease research and give insight into how to approach patients who do not respond to initial treatment.”

Researchers will also evaluate patient-reported outcomes through a mobile app. Parents will record their child’s discomfort, psychosocial concerns and other experience through the technology during a hospital stay and after discharge.

“Because children can be resistant to treatment, parents can understandably become anxious and frustrated,” Katherine Kim, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of nursing at University of California, Davis. “The mobile app will help us determine and better understand Kawasaki disease and the burden treatment can have on patients and their families.”