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On 11 May 2017, over 60 attendees from throughout Australia convened in Darwin for a one-day Annual Meeting to discuss the progress of the END RHD CRE research projects, national RHD advocacy and the development of the final Endgame output.
Congratulations to Associate Professor Asha Bowen, who has been awarded the 2022 Frank Fenner Award for Advanced Research in Infectious Diseases.
Prof Jonathan Carapetis has been elected as a new Fellow of the prestigious Australian Academy of Science in recognition of his pioneering, paradigm-shifting expertise in infectious diseases.
Antibiotic consumption can lead to antimicrobial resistance and microbiome imbalance. We sought to estimate global antibiotic consumption for sore throat, and the potential reduction in consumption due to effective vaccination against group A Streptococcus.
The social determinants of health such as access to income, education, housing and healthcare, strongly shape the occurrence of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease at the household, community and national levels.
Recruitment in research can be challenging in Australian Aboriginal contexts. We aimed to evaluate the SToP (See, Treat, Prevent skin infections) trial recruitment approach for Aboriginal families to identify barriers and facilitators and understand the utility of the visual resource used.
Regular intramuscular benzathine penicillin G injections have been the cornerstone of rheumatic heart disease (RHD) secondary prophylaxis since the 1950s. As the pharmacological correlate of protection remains unknown, it is difficult to recommend changes to this established regimen. Determining the minimum effective penicillin exposure required to prevent Streptococcus pyogenes infection will accelerate development of new long-acting penicillins for RHD prevention as well as inform opportunities to improve existing regimens. The CHIPS trial will address this knowledge gap by directly testing protection afforded by different steady state plasma concentrations of penicillin in an established model of experimental human S. pyogenes pharyngitis.
While there are many skin infections, reducing the burden of scabies and impetigo for remote living Aboriginal people, particularly children remains challenging. Aboriginal children living in remote communities have experienced the highest reported rate of impetigo in the world and are 15 times more likely to be admitted to hospital with a skin infection compared to non-Aboriginal children.
Achieving healthy skin requires the prevention of infectious diseases that affect the skin. Prevention activities range from environmental health improvements to address inequities in living situations, through to community-wide treatment programs to reduce transmission and improve skin health.
Impetigo or skin sores are estimated to affect >162 million people worldwide. Detailed descriptions of the anatomical location of skin sores are lacking.