HOPE-SAM study
Health Outcomes, Pathogenesis and Epidemiology of Severe Acute Malnutrition
Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is a severe form of child malnutrition affecting >12 million children under 5 years old around the world. Even though there are World Health Organisation protocols in place to treat children with SAM, 10-50% of children admitted to hospital for SAM will die either in hospital or in the few months after. Those that do survive have a high risk of relapse and have impaired growth up to 7 years after. We do not know why. However, there is some evidence to suggest the changes in a child's gut are critical.
From 2016-2017, we conducted a longitudinal observational study of children diagnosed with SAM in Zimbabwe and Zambia. Using a multi-omics approach (shotgun metagenomics and metabolomics) we examined how a disturbed gut microbiota (upper and lower GI) may contribute to the long-term clinical outcomes in children with SAM after treatment.
Read our preprint!
In 2025, we published a preprint from the HOPE-SAM study demonstrating distinct differences in the gut microbiome and plasma metabolome of children with oedematous versus non-oedematous severe acute malnutrition