Newborns are at the greatest risk of dying from severe infections, such as sepsis. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are between 1.3 and 2.9 million cases of these infections each year, resulting in 400,000 to 700,000 annual deaths worldwide. This burden is disproportionately higher in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Africa. Around 84% of neonatal deaths from infection could be prevented with early detection. However, this is challenging in newborns due to the nonspecific nature of symptoms, the rapid progression of the disease, and that current methods for assessing infection severity often fall short, leading to misclassification and delayed care.
ACROBAT-newborns (Appraising the Critical Role of prognostic Biomarkers in the Assessment and Triage of sick African newborns) is a consortium led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and funded by the European Union’s EDCTP3 program, aimed at evaluating the performance of xTREM, a rapid point-of-care prognostic test that measures the levels of the biomarker sTREM-1 at the bedside, to predict severe illness (regardless of its cause) in sick newborns at their first encounter. The project will be conducted in four hospitals in Africa: Ethiopia, Gabon, Mozambique, and Uganda. This new risk-stratification tool could be a paradigm change that transforms neonatal triage, helping to predict severe illness, prevent mortality, and reduce long-term sequelae.
ACROBAT-newborns is a consortium coordinated by ISGlobal, consisting of 10 partners from Europe, the United Kingdom, and Africa. This 5-year project is structured around three main work pillars:
1) A clinical cohort study recruiting up to 4,000 sick and 400 healthy newborns across four hospitals in low-income countries, aiming not only to evaluate the performance of xTREM but also to advance the discovery of additional prognostic biomarkers;
2) An innovation and go-to-market strategy to accelerate the valorization of the device, the industrialization of its prototype, and its commercialization to ensure it reaches markets in resource-limited settings;
3) An evaluation of the overall impact of xTREM from the perspectives of health economics, health impact assessment, and socio-behavioral sciences, including usability, acceptability, and feasibility studies.
The project officially started in January 2025 and will run until December 2029. During this period, ACROBAT-newborns will focus on developing innovative solutions for neonatal care, providing high-quality evidence to support healthcare professionals’ decision-making, improve outcomes and survival, and optimize the use of healthcare resources.
