Bone and Joint Infection

The goal of this clinical trial is to evaluate an investigational ultralow dose positron emission tomography (PET imaging) technique for increased bone turnover that is found in diseases such as cancer, trauma, infection, arthritis, and other benign diseases of bone detection and monitoring. The main question it aims to answer is: Can the investigators optimize the timing, scan duration, and image reconstruction to reduce the radiation dose 10-100 fold of the current clinical standard? Participants will be injected with a radioactive tracer called Fluorine-18 (18F)-sodium fluoride (NaF) and be imaged on a new type of high sensitivity PET scanner for up to 3 hours.

This is a multi- centre trial of children with bone and joint infections (BJIs) at eight major paediatric hospitals in Australia and New Zealand. The primary objective is to establish if in children with acute, uncomplicated BJIs, entirely oral antibiotic treatment is not inferior to initial intravenous (IV) treatment for 1 to 7 days followed by an oral antibiotic course in achieving full recovery 3 months after presentation. Children will be randomly allocated to the 'entirely oral antibiotic' group or the 'standard treatment' group.

Ofloxacin is a gold standard antibiotic for the treatment of bone and joint infections due to sensible staphylococcus strains. However, in the elderly, inter-individual variability of the pharmacokinetics may reduce the efficacy or increase toxicity. The occurrence of ofloxacin side effects is likely to be increased in case of higher exposition. However, the serum concentration-toxicity relationship has not yet been determined. The purpose of this project is to assess the association between the residual serum concentration of ofloxacin at day 3 and the occurrence of at least one adverse effect attributable to ofloxacin, and determine a threshold toxicity concentration if this association exists.

Initial oral antibiotic treatment for children and adolescents with uncomplicated bone and joint infections (BJI) has been found non-inferior to initial IV antibiotics in one randomized controlled trial (RCT). The real-world effectiveness of initial oral antibiotics for children and adolescents with BJI is unclear. This nationwide, prospective, multicenter, real-world cohort study aims to compare the effectiveness and safety of initial oral antibiotic treatment for children and adolescents with uncomplicated BJI in a real-world setting with those who received initial oral antibiotics in our RCT.

The aim of this study is to determine the imputability of adverse events in patients who have had phage therapy for the treatment of their bone or joint or implant infection, in order to find out whether these adverse effects are related to surgery, antibiotic treatment or bacteriophages.