Search
Group A streptococcus (GAS) infections, such as pharyngitis and impetigo, can lead to rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease (RHD). Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations experience high rates of RHD and GAS skin infection, yet rates of GAS pharyngitis are unclear.
Pneumonia remains a leading cause of hospitalization and death among young children worldwide, and the diagnostic challenge of differentiating bacterial from non-bacterial pneumonia is the main driver of antibiotic use for treating pneumonia in children. Causal Bayesian networks (BNs) serve as powerful tools for this problem as they provide clear maps of probabilistic relationships between variables and produce results in an explainable way by incorporating both domain expert knowledge and numerical data.
The need for coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination in different age groups and populations is a subject of great uncertainty and an ongoing global debate. Critical knowledge gaps regarding COVID-19 vaccination include the duration of protection offered by different priming and booster vaccination regimens in different populations, including homologous or heterologous schedules.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a rare, inherited, life-limiting condition predominantly affecting the lungs, for which there is no cure. The disease is characterized by recurrent pulmonary exacerbations (PEx), which are thought to drive progressive lung damage. Management of these episodes is complex and generally involves multiple interventions targeting different aspects of disease. The emergence of innovative trials and use of Bayesian statistical methods has created renewed opportunities for studying heterogeneous populations in rare diseases.
Tom Snelling BMBS DTMH GDipClinEpid PhD FRACP Head, Infectious Disease Implementation Research 08 6319 1817 tom.snelling@thekids.org.au Head,
Pat Tom Holt Snelling PhD, DSc, FRCPath, FRCPI, FAA BMBS DTMH GDipClinEpid PhD FRACP Emeritus Honorary Researcher Head, Infectious Disease
Although benzylpenicillin (penicillin G) is listed by the World Health Organization as an Essential Medicine, dose optimization is a persistent challenge, especially for long-acting intramuscular formulations. Maintaining sustained antibiotic exposure at target concentrations is crucial for secondary chemoprophylaxis of rheumatic heart disease and treatment of syphilis.
Skin health is widely recognised as being important for overall good health and well-being, yet the burden of skin infections in remote Aboriginal communities remains high. This project aimed to explore if virtual support for skin health could be a strategy to reduce community barriers to skin health engagement.
Vaccine policy and guideline recommendations require high quality evidence. A review of the evidence quality used to inform vaccine clinical practice guidelines could help guide researchers on how to improve the design of their clinical studies to produce evidence of greater value to decision-makers.
Bringing optimised coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine schedules to immunocompromised populations (BOOST-IC) is a multi-site, adaptive platform trial designed to assess the effect of different booster vaccination schedules in the Australian immunocompromised population on the immunogenicity, safety and cross-protection against COVID-19 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its variants.