There are about 279 clinical studies being (or have been) conducted in Ethiopia. The country of the clinical trial is determined by the location of where the clinical research is being studied. Most studies are often held in multiple locations & countries.
The main objective is to implement Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) at selected facilities in Addis Ababa and Oromia Regions to achieve high effective coverage in the catchment population.
Among several factors contributing to the occurrence of undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overnutrition, and chronic disease, unhealthy diet is one of the most important factors that need to be addressed to tackle the burden in low- and middle-income countries. To maintain healthy eating in a population, it is crucial to develop and implement country-specific food-based dietary guidelines as well as monitor the adherence of the population with the guidelines. The aim of this study is to generate evidence that will help the development and validation of food-based dietary guidelines and a healthy eating index for Ethiopia. The method to develop Ethiopian food-based dietary guidelines is adapted from the 2015 Dutch food-based dietary guidelines and the Dutch healthy diet index development and validation process, and the 1998 FAO/WHO preparation and use of food-based dietary guidelines. A multidisciplinary technical working will be established to develop FBDGs. The working group will identify key messages for the guidelines that can address priority diet-related public health problems in Ethiopia based on the evidence that will be generated by the PhD student from Wageningen University and Research. The evidence generation will begin by identifying top ten diet-related diseases that lead to high morbidity and mortality in 2016. The nutrition situation (nutritional status, dietary pattern, and nutrient gaps) analysis will be conducted to define the objectives of FBDGs. A systematic review will be conducted by formulating research questions to address the objectives of the FBDGs. The FBDGs will be translated for a specific population subgroup using linear mathematical programming and validated for cultural appropriateness, acceptability, consumer understanding and practicality of the messages. Focus group discussions and key informant interviews will be conducted to validate the FBDGs. The most recent Ethiopian national food consumption survey data collected in 2011 will be used to develop a healthy eating index (HEI). The selection of a healthy eating component of HEI will be done based on the FBDGs. Validation of a healthy eating index will be conducted by comparing the HEI score based on 24-hour recall with the HEI score based on food frequency questionnaire for population characteristics and association with micronutrient intake with or without adjusting for energy and anthropometric measurement. Developing short food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) that can be scored with the index for dietary counseling and public health practice as well as dietary gap assessment for policy recommendation will be part of the study. Validation of FFQ will be conducted by collecting primary data among women of reproductive age in 500 households in rural and urban areas of Ethiopia. The data will be analyzed using the latest version of STATA, SPSS, and NVIVO software. Correlations and other appropriate advanced statistical technique will be applied as needed to answer the objectives of the study. Ethical approval will be received from the medical ethical committee of Wageningen University and Research and scientific and ethical review office of Ethiopian Public Health Institute. This Ph.D. research is supported by the Food Systems for Healthier Diets flagship of the CGIAR- Agriculture for Nutrition and Health Programme coordinated by International Food Policy Research Institute. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Ethiopian Public Health Institute are collaborators of this project to develop the FBDGs.
Mothers and young children in rural Ethiopia lack sufficient nutrition, and a compounding factor is presence of high levels of fluoride (> 5-10 mg/day) affecting body functions. Interventions involving chickens to provide eggs and eggshell (a source of calcium) are one solution. The overall purpose is to examine how increasing dietary calcium by using eggshell powder (ESP) reduces fluoride (F) absorption in women. It is known calcium binds F to prevent its absorption but application of this to a community based study has not been tested. The aim is to provide chickens to produce eggs for young children and to provide ESP to women (mothers). For children, an egg a day should improve growth and nutritional status. For women, the ESP provides calcium to reduce fluorosis and therefore improve function without affecting iron and zinc status. For the women, blood samples will be tested in a subsample for F, calcium, zinc and iron; urine samples will be measured for F, calcium and creatinine (to correct spot urine). Hemoglobin will be measured as an indicator of overall nutritional status in women and children. Nutritional status of young children (6-18 mo) and of their mothers prior and after the intervention (by 6 months) will be assessed. between 6 and 12 month there will be monitoring for sustainability of chilckens in the community; for continued use of egg (in children) and ESP (in women); during this time the control group will receive chickens and also undergo monitoring. The study will take place in the Rift valley of Southern Ethiopia. Identification of the knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) of mothers on egg consumption will be done at baseline and at the end ("endline"). Caregivers will be instructed to give each child 1 egg (cooked) per day in the intervention, and one "bottle cap" of eggshell powder (1000 mg calcium) per day for themselves. Families receiving chickens will be instructed on cage construction. Throughout the study, any problems arising in keeping chickens will be recorded in order to assess the feasibility and practicality of raising chickens as way to mitigate fluorosis and improve nutritional status.
Title: Evaluation of host biomarker-based point-of-care tests for targeted screening for active TB (Screen TB) Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) places severe pressure on health care services of the developing world. Despite the introduction of the highly sensitive and specific GeneXpert MTB/RIF (GeneXpert) test [1] with a potential turn-around time of two hours, many people in high TB prevalence areas still do not have access to efficient TB diagnostic services due to logistical constraints in these settings. A cost effective, rapid, point-of-care screening test with high sensitivity would identify people with a high likelihood for active TB and would prioritize them for testing with more expensive, technically or logistically demanding assays including GeneXpert or liquid culture, facilitating cost-effective diagnostic work-up in resource-limited settings. A serum cytokine signature for active TB disease, discovered in the AE-TBC project, with a sensitivity of 89% (CI 78 - 95%) and specificity of 76% (CI 68 - 83%), will be optimised and utilized in a point-of-care format (TransDot) to rapidly test for TB disease in symptomatic people. Hypothesis: The TransDot test will achieve a sensitivity of > 90% for TB disease, in a training set of people suspected of having TB disease, and be validated (achieve similarly high sensitivity) subsequently in a prospective test set of people suspected of having TB disease, when compared to a composite gold standard of sputum culture, smear, GeneXpert, chest X-ray, TB symptoms and TB treatment response. Objectives: The overall objective of the study is to incorporate a six-marker serum signature into a multiplex UCP-LFA format, referred to as TransDot, for finger-prick blood testing. The end point of the study is the accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) of the UCP-LFA TransDot test on finger-prick blood for active TB and will be prospectively compared against gold standard composite diagnostic criteria (GeneXpert, MGIT culture, TB sputum smear, CXR, TB symptom screen and response to TB treatment). Primary: The primary outcome of interest will be accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the TransDot finger-prick test when compared with the composite gold standard tests.
Women living in low-income countries are at elevated risk of death in connection to pregnancy, as well as infants born to women in such settings. It is probable that several factors are involved, such as poverty, lack of education and access to healthcare. Infectious diseases constitute important threats to maternal health in resource-limited settings. Tuberculosis (TB) is reported to be the third leading cause of maternal death globally. Furthermore, TB can be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy, with high risk of severe consequences for the infant. Despite these data, neither the role of TB in relation to co-existing risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes, nor the mechanisms involved, are well understood. It is likely that TB interacts with other characteristics, in particular socio-economic condition and HIV infection, which could obscure associations between TB and pregnancy outcomes. For this reason, it is critical to design studies so that the independent role of TB can be deduced. This project aims to investigate how TB infection in women affects the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes in relation to co-existing factors, and how exposure to TB infection may impact growth and development of infants born to women with TB. In addition, mechanisms in which TB and the immune system during pregnancy will be explored. The project is conducted at public health facilities in Ethiopia, where 2 000 women have been recruited during antenatal care. These women will be followed until 5 years after delivery, along with their offspring born during the study period. Detailed data is collected at inclusion and at study visits during follow-up, with submission of samples for TB testing and immunological analyses. Better knowledge on the characteristics of TB infection in association with pregnancy, and how TB affects maternal and child health, can be used to construct new guidelines for management of TB in women of fertile age. This may contribute to reductions in adverse pregnancy outcomes, including maternal and infant deaths.
Recent advances in molecular diagnostics of tuberculosis, especially the GeneXpert Mycobacterium tuberculosis/Rifampicin test have reduced the time to diagnose Rifampicin Resistant Tuberculosis (RR-TB) but only rifampicin resistance is diagnosed, leading to presumptive diagnosis of resistance to isoniazid and maybe other drugs. Thus in low and middle income countries, most drug sensitivity testing relies on phenotypic drug resistance testing, which takes up to 4 months. In addition, currently, culture on monthly sputum samples is recommended by the World Health Organization for follow-up of Rifampicin Resistant Tuberculosis patients under treatment. Unfortunately, culture is often not locally available and samples need to be transported from field to culture laboratories. The associated transport delays lead to high rates of contamination and false negative culture, particularly in laboratories in low resource settings. Many gaps for the diagnosis and management of RR-TB patients still need to be addressed and the DIAMA project (DIAgnostics for Multidrug resistant tuberculosis in Africa) study aims to address some of them.
This observational study will examine the safety and efficacy of bedaquiline and delamanid used (individually, not together) in routine, multidrug regimens for treatment of MDR-TB. The information gathered in this study will inform doctors how best to use these TB drugs in the future.
This study investigates the association between locally consumed food items with anemia among pregnant women, in Addis Ababa city, Ethiopia.
Pre-school undernutrition is a global problem with life long adverse consequences. One form of undernutrition, chronic undernutrition or stunting, affects 171 million children under the age of 5 worldwide. 35% of these children live in Africa. In Ethiopia, the focus of this study, in 2014, 44.5% of children under 5 were stunted. Stunting is the consequence of several factors including low birth weights, sub-optimal infant and complementary feeding practices and repeated illness. In Ethiopia, complementary feeding is sub-optimal; only 4% of children aged 6-24 months met the minimum dietary diversity recommended by WHO. The investigators hypothesize four main reasons why many children and mothers in Ethiopia fall short of best practice in terms of meeting nutritional needs and providing appropriate childcare. (i) Lack of information on healthy eating and appropriate child-feeding practices; (ii) Limited affordability; (iii) Limited accessibility to markets and diverse food items; and (iv) Limited peer effects in spreading information and adopting new practices. This study will assess the efficacy of the interventions that address these four barriers to optimal complementary feeding practices in Ethiopia. Using a cluster randomized control design, mother-father-child pairs in two localities, Holeta and Ejere will be enrolled. Treatment will be randomized at the garee (village) level. There will be five treatment arms and a control group: T1, weekly maternal nutrition BCC sessions for four months; T2, weekly maternal nutrition BCC sessions for four months and weekly paternal nutrition BCC sessions for three months; T3, receipt of a food voucher for six months; T4, weekly maternal nutrition BCC sessions for four months and receipt of a food voucher for six months; T5 weekly maternal nutrition BCC sessions for four months and weekly paternal nutrition BCC sessions for three months and receipt of a food voucher for six months; and C, a control group. Within household, recipient of voucher (mother or father) will be randomly selected.
This study aims at evaluating the impact of integrating nutrition sensitive behavioral change communication (BCC) in the context of increased household production of chicken and eggs on women and children diet.