The SNAP trial goes live!

After years in the planning and building of international collaborations, the Staphylococcus aureus Network Adaptive Platform (SNAP) trial has commenced recruitment. The first participant in this global trial was enrolled at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in February 2022.

Staphylococcus aureus bacteria are the greatest cause of mortality from bloodstream infections. Approximately 5,000 Australians are affected each year with a mortality rate of 20-25 per cent per episode. Despite this disease burden, fewer than 3,500 patients have been included in clinical trials globally for S. aureus bloodstream infections.

The SNAP trial plans to address the most pressing clinical questions for S. aureus bloodstream infections. SNAP is designed as an ‘adaptive’ platform trial that allows multiple treatment domains to occur in parallel and uses Bayesian statistical methods to arrive at answers as efficiently as possible. Treatment arms may be stopped once a treatment has been determined to be preferred to a control treatment. The trial has the potential to transform how this common and deadly disease is managed.

Led from the Doherty Institute and sponsored by the Department of Infectious Diseases, the SNAP trial aims to include more than 7,000 trial participants from 100 hospital trial sites around the world. Funding has been obtained from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and other national health research funding bodies in each involved region of the world.

Two notable components of SNAP are that:

1) Children and pregnant women will be included in the entire framework of the trial, including in the statistical models;

2) We are using a layered consent process with a short patient information form that links to a website, allowing potential participants greater agency in accessing the amount of information they desire.

The announcement of $2.1 million in funding from the latest round of NHMRC Clinical Trials Cohort Studies grant scheme gives a green-light for the paediatric arm of the trial, SNAP-PY to start. The inclusion of children will help generate an evidence-base needed to improve the clinical care of children with a Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infection.

Please see https://www.snaptrial.com.au/ for further information, including multimedia resources for potential participants and their families.