Point-of-Care Approaches for Meningitis Diagnosis in a Low-Resource Setting (Southwestern Uganda): Observational Cohort Study Protocol of the “PI-POC” Trial

Giulia Gaudenzi   ^{1, 2 *} , BSc, MSc, PhD ;   Elias Kumbakumba   ^{3 *} , MD ;   Reza Rasti   ^{1 *} , MD ;   Deborah Nanjebe   ⁴ , MSc ;   Pedro Réu   ⁵ , PhD ;   Dan Nyehangane   ⁴ , MSc ;   Andreas Mårtensson   ⁶ , MD, PhD ;   Milly Nassejje   ³ , MD ;   Jens Karlsson   ⁷ , MSc ;   John Mzee   ^{3, 8} , MD ;   Peter Nilsson   ⁵ , PhD ;   Stephen Businge   ^{3, 8} , MD ;   Edmund Loh   ^{7, 9} , BSc, MSc, PhD ;   Yap Boum II   ^{3, 4} , PhD ;   Helene Andersson-Svahn   ² , PhD ;   Jesper Gantelius   ² , PhD, MD ;   Juliet Mwanga-Amumpaire   ^{3, 4} , MD ;   Tobias Alfvén   ¹ , BSc, MD, PhD

¹ Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

² Division of Nanobiotechnology, Department of Protein Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SciLifeLab, Stockholm, Sweden

³ Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Faculty of Medicine, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Mbarara, Uganda

⁴ MSF Epicentre Mbarara Research Centre, Mbarara, Uganda

⁵ Division of Affinity Proteomics, Department of Protein Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SciLifeLab, Stockholm, Sweden

⁶ Department of Women's and Children's Health, International Maternal and Child Health, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

⁷ Department of Microbiology, Tumor, and Cell Biology, BioClinicum, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

⁸ Holy Innocents Children’s Hospital, Mbarara, Uganda

⁹ SCELSE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

*these authors contributed equally