Search

Research

The Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) is a 24-item self-report measure of alexithymia. Originally developed in English, it was designed to try to enable more comprehensive (i.e., facet-level and valence-specific) alexithymia assessments. This study aimed to introduce and validate a Polish version of the PAQ. Our sample were 1,008 people (69.44% females, 30.06% males and 0.50% non-binary) aged 18-78 (M = 29.69, SD = 14.15) from the general community.

Research

The relationship between physical activity and child health and development is well-documented, yet the extant literature provides limited causal insight into the amount of physical activity considered optimal for improving any given health or developmental outcome.

Research

Diagnosing urinary tract infections (UTIs) in children in the emergency department (ED) is challenging due to the variable clinical presentations and difficulties in obtaining a urine sample free from contamination.

Research

To describe antibiotic treatment durations that pediatric infectious diseases (ID) and critical care clinicians usually recommend for bloodstream infections in critically ill children.

Research

Exhaled breath condensate (EBC) collection is a non-invasive, safe method for measurement of biomarkers in patients with lung disease. Other methods of obtaining samples from the lungs, such as bronchoalveolar lavage, are invasive and require anaesthesia/sedation in neonates and infants. EBC is particularly appealing for assessing biomarkers in preterm-born infants, a population at risk of ongoing lung disease.

Research

Results from recent clinical studies suggest potential efficacy of immune training (IT)-based approaches for protection against severe lower respiratory tract infections in infants, but underlying mechanisms are unclear.

Research

The abundance of cell-free microRNA (miRNA) has been measured in blood plasma and proposed as a source of novel, minimally invasive biomarkers for several diseases. Despite improvements in quantification methods, there is no consensus regarding how haemolysis affects plasma miRNA content.

Research

Exome sequencing has enabled molecular diagnoses for rare disease patients but often with initial diagnostic rates of ~25-30%. Here we develop a robust computational pipeline to rank variants for reassessment of unsolved rare disease patients. A comprehensive web-based patient report is generated in which all deleterious variants can be filtered by gene, variant characteristics, OMIM disease and Phenolyzer scores, and all are annotated with an ACMG classification and links to ClinVar.

Research

The gut microbiome is a well-recognized modulator of host immunity, and its compositions differ between geographically separated human populations. Systemic innate immune responses to microbial derivatives also differ between geographically distinct human populations. However, the potential role of the microbiome in mediating geographically varied immune responses is unexplored. We here applied 16S amplicon sequencing to profile the stool microbiome and, in parallel, measured whole-blood innate immune cytokine responses to several pattern recognition receptor (PRR) agonists among 2-year-old children across biogeographically diverse settings. Microbiomes differed mainly between high- and low-resource environments and were not strongly associated with other demographic factors. We found strong correlations between responses to Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) and relative abundances of Bacteroides and Prevotella populations, shared among Canadian and Ecuadorean children.

Research

Over 5 days, 120 schoolchildren from two schools in the remote Kimberley region of Australia were screened for Strep A pharyngitis. Molecular point-of-care testing identified Strep A pharyngitis in 13/18 (72.2%) symptomatic children. The portability and feasibility of molecular point-of-care testing was highly practical for remote settings.