Study Status: Completed
Recruit Status: Completed
Study Type: Interventional
Official Title: A Randomized, Placebo-controlled, Double-blind Trial of Intravenous Magnesium Sulfate for the Management of Severe Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease With Autonomic Nervous Syst
Brief Summary:
Hand foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is a common infectious disease caused by a number of different viruses - a small proportion of children infected with a particular type of enterovirus (EV71) develop neurological and systemic complications that may prove fatal. Very large epidemics of EV71 related HFMD have occurred across Asia in recent years; in 2011, in excess of 100,000 Vietnamese children were diagnosed with HFMD and 164 died.
In children with severe HFMD the particular part of the brain that regulates the heart, blood circulation, and breathing responses can be affected. Management of this complication is very difficult and we currently use an expensive drug (milrinone) that is hard to obtain and has significant side effects, without having good evidence that it is effective.
Magnesium sulphate (Mg) is a cheap, readily available drug that has been used in other diseases with similar complications, and we have preliminary data from a small case series that suggests it might be a good treatment for HFMD patients with signs indicating this type of brain involvement.
We think that early intervention with Mg, when signs of brain involvement are still relatively mild, will control this problem better than waiting until it is well established and giving milrinone as at present, and this in turn may prevent progression to severe disease. The aims of the project are to evaluate the effects of Mg on hypertension, signs of brain dysfunction, outcome (death or neurological sequelae), changes in a variety of blood and urine components, and measures of cardiovascular function, in severe HFMD.
The study design is a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial. Children on the pediatric intensive care unit with a clinica