BOBBi

Bacterial meningitis is an infectious disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. In the UK, around 350 babies are diagnosed with bacterial meningitis each year.

Steroids are commonly used to treat bacterial meningitis in older children and together with antibiotics can reduce long-term problems. At the moment we do not know if steroids will also help young babies and the study aims to find this out.

We want to answer the question:

In babies less than 3 months of age with suspected bacterial meningitis, does using steroids, compared to not using steroids, impact their health and development in the short and long term?

To answer this question, babies with suspected bacterial meningitis will have an equal chance of being put into one of two groups:

• Half will be given a steroid (dexamethasone) to treat bacterial meningitis, in addition to usual care
• Half will receive usual care for bacterial meningitis (with no steroids)

We will compare the two groups to find out whether giving steroids or not affects babies' health in the short term. Babies will also be followed up until they are 2 years old to understand if there are any differences in their long term development.

The trial will recruit 965 infants in approximately 60 hospitals in the UK over a 4.5 year recruitment period.

BOBBi is coordinated by the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit Clinical Trial Unit (NPEU CTU) at the University of Oxford, sponsored by City St George's, University of London and funded by the National Institute of National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) programme.

For more information, please contact the BOBBi team at BOBBi@npeu.ox.ac.uk