Kimberlin David
Biography
Dr. David Kimberlin holds the Sergio Stagno Endowed Chair in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he is Vice Chair for Clinical and Translational Research and Co-Director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Kimberlin is the Principal Investigator for the Collaborative Antiviral Study Group (CASG), now known as the Congenital and Perinatal Infections Consortium (CPIC). Funded continuously by NIH/NIAID/DMID since the early 1970s, the CASG/CPIC is a network of pediatric academic medical centers that evaluates antiviral therapeutics in rare diseases with a large unmet medical need, including congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease, neonatal herpes simplex virus (HSV) infections, congenital Zika syndrome, neonatal and infantile influenza infection, neonatal enteroviral sepsis syndrome, and acute flaccid myelitis (AFM).
Dr. Kimberlin also is Editor of the 2021 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases (Red Book). He also was Editor of the 2018 and 2015 editions, and will be for the upcoming 2024 edition. Since 2007, Dr. Kimberlin has served as the AAP Red Book liaison to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Dr. Kimberlin is a Past-President of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS). In 2016 he received the Ronald McDonald House Charities 2016 Medical Award of Excellence. He has received numerous education awards.
Keynote Lecture Abstract
Treatment of neonates and children: an overview
Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection results either in clinically apparent (symptomatic) disease at birth, or in clinically inapparent (asymptomatic) infection. Data on the treatment of congenital CMV infection to date are only available for infants with symptomatic disease. In the 1990s, the Collaborative Antiviral Study Group (CASG) conducted a randomized controlled study of six weeks of intravenous ganciclovir versus no therapy, which demonstrated that antiviral treatment protects against hearing deterioration over the first six months of life. In the 2000s, the CASG identified the dose of oral valganciclovir that produces similar systemic ganciclovir exposure as does intravenous ganciclovir. And in the 2010s, the CASG conducted a multicenter, multinational, randomized placebo-controlled trial of longer-term oral valganciclovir treatment that found six months of therapy to be superior to six weeks of therapy for protecting against hearing deterioration and improving developmental outcomes at 12 and 24 months. In all of these studies, treatment was started in the first month of life. A recently completed randomized, placebo-controlled CASG study conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom evaluated valganciclovir treatment started beyond a month of age, and did not demonstrate any benefit. A recent CASG investigation of valganciclovir treatment of asymptomatic CMV infection closed early due to unacceptable toxicity. As additional antiviral drugs with CMV activity are developed, they should be studied as combination therapy with valganciclovir in symptomatically infected infants or, assuming an adequate safety profile, as monotherapy in asymptomatically infected infants.
