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A high burden of bacterial skin infections is well documented in remote-living Indigenous children and young people in high-income countries.
Group A Streptococcus (Strep A) is responsible for a significant global health and economic burden. The recent prioritization of Strep A vaccine development by the World Health Organization has prompted global research activities and collaborations. To progress this prioritization, establishment of robust surveillance for Strep A to generate updated regional disease burden estimates and to establish platforms for future impact evaluation is essential.
Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream (SAB) infection is a common and severe infectious disease, with a 90-day mortality of 15%-30%. Despite this, <3000 people have been randomized into clinical trials of treatments for SAB infection.
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.
Streptococcus pyogenes, or group A Streptococcus (GAS), infections contribute to a high burden of disease in Aboriginal Australians, causing skin infections and immune sequelae such as rheumatic heart disease. Controlling skin infections in these populations has proven difficult, with transmission dynamics being poorly understood. We aimed to identify the relative contributions of impetigo and asymptomatic throat carriage to GAS transmission.
The Staphylococcus aureus Network Adaptive Platform (SNAP) trial is a multifactorial Bayesian adaptive platform trial that aims to improve the way that S. aureus bloodstream infection, a globally common and severe infectious disease, is treated. In a world first, the SNAP trial will simultaneously investigate the effects of multiple intervention modalities within multiple groups of participants with different forms of S. aureus bloodstream infection.
Impetigo is a contagious skin disease caused by Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes. Without treatment, impetigo may be recurrent, develop into severe disease, or have serious, life-threatening sequelae. Standard treatment consists of topical or systemic antibiotic therapy (depending on severity), however, due to antibiotic resistance some therapies are increasingly ineffective.
Asha Bowen BA MBBS DCH FRACP PhD GAICD FAHMS OAM Head, Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention Head, Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention Areas of expertise: Skin
The role Staphylococcus aureus antimicrobial resistance genes and toxins play in disease severity, management and outcome in childhood is an emerging field requiring further exploration.
Rates of acute rheumatic fever, a sequelae of group A Streptococcal (GAS) infection, remain unacceptably high in Indigenous Māori and Pacific children in New Zealand. This prospective study aimed to describe GAS antibody titres in healthy children (5–14 years) by ethnicity, and to determine how paired titres vary with GAS culture positive and negative pharyngitis, and GAS skin infections.