The Pediatric Infectious Diseases (PID) Unit of the Second Department of Paediatrics at the University of Athens (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, NKUA) is staffed by fivePediatricians with special training in Infectious Disease: Professor M. Tsolia, Professor T. Zaoutis, Assistant Professor D. Dimopoulou, Consultant E. Briassouli andAcademic fellow A. Syggelou. Additionally, the unit is supported by scientific collaborators, resident pediatricians, medical students, and specialized nurses. The PID unit is a certified center providing training in Infectious Diseases to two trainees.

The PID Unit specializes in the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of children withinfectious diseases, providing high-level medical care, and is actively involved in research in this field. The Unit operates according to international standards in state-of-the-art facilities and includes four negative pressure rooms. The unit serves as a referral center for patients with severe or specific infections and handles a large number of complex cases from central and southern Greece. During the pandemic, the Infectious Diseases Unit was a referral center for pediatric cases with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Onceweekly (every Thursday), there is anInfectious Diseases outpatient clinic and the pediatric tuberculosis clinic.

The Unit provides consultationsabout infectious diseases in cases across all hospital departments. Activities include daily visits to the Intensive Care Unit, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and the Oncology Department. Furthermore, the Unit actively participates in the education of medical students, resident doctors, and other healthcare professionals, as well as in research programs related to pediatric infections.

The Unit also plays an important role in monitoring antimicrobial use across all hospital departments and participates in the OEKOKHA (National Program for the Control of Hospital Infections), achieving excellent results in recent years. Additionally, in collaboration with the Hospital Infection Control Committee, the Infectious Disease specialists lead the surveillance, control, and prevention of infection transmission within the hospital.

The Pediatric Tuberculosis Clinic, established in 1981, is part of the Infectious Diseases Unit and is a referral center for pediatric tuberculosis cases in Central and Southern Greece. It also treats children infected with environmental mycobacteria. The clinic collaborates closely with the corresponding adult tuberculosis clinic at the Sotiria Hospital, as well as with the Mycobacteria Reference Center at the same hospital. It also collaborates with the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention and is a member of the European Pediatric Tuberculosis Network (PTBNET), which engages in significant research activities related to pediatric tuberculosis across Europe.

The faculty members involved in the Infectious Diseases Unit are active in research, with numerous publications in international scientific journals and participation in research programs and collaborations both in Greece and abroad. Professor M. Tsolia has served as Secretary of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID) for two terms.

Research activities of the Infectious Diseases Unit are supported by the research laboratory of the Allergy-Immunology Unit, as well as the Clinical Biochemistry laboratory of the 2nd Paediatric department of the NKUA. The Infectious Diseases Unit also includes the Clinical Research Unit on Pediatric Infections, which conducts funded multicenter clinical trials on antibiotics and vaccines.

The Unit participates in national and European research collaborations, including the Clinical Epidemiology and Disease Outcome Center (CLEO), the European Pediatric Tuberculosis Study Network (PTBNET), GARPEC – PENTA ID, and PED-MERMAIDS PENTA ID. The Unit was part of the PERFORM project (PErsonalised Risk assessment in Febrile illness to Optimise Real-life Management across the European Union), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. This ambitious five-year collaboration aimed to develop a comprehensive plan for managing febrile patients using new genomic and proteomic methods.

Currently, the Infectious Diseases Unit participates in the five-year, multicenter DIAMONDS project (DIagnosis And Management Of febrile illness using RNA Personalised Medicine Signature Diagnosis) (www.diamonds2020.eu). The DIAMONDS study, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program uses a new personalized medicine approach to diagnosis of infectious and inflammatory diseases based on individual RNA signatures detected in blood. The project aims to identify a minimal transcript signature for all common infectious and inflammatory diseases as the basis for Personalized Molecular Signature Diagnosis (PMSD).

In collaboration with biotechnology and industrial partners, novel devices will be developed to rapidly detect the set of gene transcripts required for PMSD, and evaluate their impact on improved patient diagnosis and treatment. The project aims to build a publicly available “library of molecular signatures” for all common infectious and inflammatory diseases and develop a comparative molecular classification of these diseases to facilitate faster diagnosis and treatment.

The Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Outcomes (CLEO) was established in 2011 under the auspices of the 1st and 2nd University Pediatric Clinics of NKUA, with a donation from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and under the scientific supervision of Professor T. Zaoutis. The purpose of CLEO is to improve patient safety and the quality of healthcare services in Greek hospitals, with a focus on the prevention of hospital-acquired infections and the rational use of antibiotics.

Finally, in collaboration with the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), the Infectious Diseases Unit participates in the European research program NeoIPC, NeoDeco, which is a randomized controlled trial funded by Penta, and aimsto evaluate whether optimized kangaroo care can reduce severe neonatal infections, sepsis, and colonization by resistant microorganisms in high-risk neonates being hospitalized in the NICU.