They are excellent co-supervisors, who recently published an article in a highly ranked journal with their Ph.D. student. In their meta-analysis, they evaluated the treatment options for Clostridioides difficile infection in adults, and their results showed which one is the most effective for this life-threatening condition. In January, Katalin Lenti and László Földvári-Nagy were named Supervisors of the Month (Year 2/3) at the Centre for Translational Medicine.
Katalin Lenti and László Földvári-Nagy joined the CTM training as supervisors in 2021, immediately after it was launched in Budapest. The married couple always do research together and mentor student researchers and Ph.D. students jointly. Their first Ph.D student from CTM was Anna Éliás, a dietician, who is about to obtain her Ph.D degree this academic year. In her first project, she clarified the effect of probiotic supplementation during antibiotic treatment, which, as her research pointed out, is unwarranted. In her second project, she investigated the effects of probiotic supplementation on gut microbiome diversity and composition in a healthy population. The second PhD student of Dr. Lenti and Dr. Földvári-Nagy is Dr. Dániel S. Bednárik, a pediatric resident, whose topic is also related to the microbiome.
“In his first project, Dr. Bednárik compared the effectiveness and safety of different therapies against Clostridioides infection in adults. We supported his work in all aspects, and our results showed that fecal microbiota transplantation is the most effective treatment in recurrent cases. We also determined which antibiotics are the most effective in non-recurrent cases,” says Dr. Földvári-Nagy. The supervisor highlights that their results were recently published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe Journal. He underlines that the results achieved were greatly supported by the methodological experts and statisticians provided by CTM.
“We have chosen Clostridioides as a research topic because Dr. Bednárik works at the Heim Pál National Institute of Paediatrics and he is interested in gastroenterology and infectology in addition to pediatrics. During his first two years of residency training, he spent a lot of time at the gastroenterology department and found that Clostridioides infection was common in children. This is why we are focusing on pediatric patients with Clostridioides infection in his second project,” says Dr Lenti. Conducting this meta-analysis will be more difficult because there is much less research data available on children than on adults. However, researchers are optimistic and they believe that they will be able to identify the most effective treatment for Clostridioides infection in children.