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Research

Health care workers (HCWs) faced an increased risk of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout commenced in February 2021 to priority groups, including HCWs. Given their increased risk, as well as influence on patients’ vaccine uptake, it was important that HCWs had a positive COVID-19 vaccination experience, as well as trusting the vaccine safety and efficacy data.

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Malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) based on the detection of the Plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein 2 (HRP2) antigen are widely used for detection of active infection with this parasite and are the only practical malaria diagnostic test in some endemic settings.

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Acute Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease is a concise, yet comprehensive, clinical resource highlighting must-know information on rheumatic heart disease and acute rheumatic fever from a global perspective

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Benzathine penicillin G (BPG) is used as first-line treatment for most forms of syphilis and as secondary prophylaxis against rheumatic heart disease (RHD). Perceptions that poor quality of BPG is linked to reported adverse effects and therapeutic failure may impact syphilis and RHD control programs. Clinical networks and web-based advertising were used to obtain vials of BPG from a wide range of countries.

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Immunity is distinct in early life and greater precision is required in our understanding of mechanisms of early life protection to inform development of new pediatric vaccines

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Blood responses in very preterm infants with LOS are characterised by altered host immune responses that appear to reflect unbalanced immuno-metabolic homeostasis

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These data highlight the importance of recognising Sporotrichosis in children outside an outbreak setting

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Prevalence of impetigo (skin sores) remains high in remote Australian Aboriginal communities, Fiji, and other areas of socio-economic disadvantage. Skin sore infections, driven primarily in these settings by Group A Streptococcus (GAS) contribute substantially to the disease burden in these areas. Despite this, estimates for the force of infection, infectious period and basic reproductive ratio-all necessary for the construction of dynamic transmission models-have not been obtained.

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Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) caused by parasites of the Leishmania donovani complex can be fatal in susceptible individuals. Understanding the interactions between host and pathogen is one way to obtain leads to develop better drugs and for vaccine development. In recent years multiple omics-based approaches have assisted researchers to gain a more global picture of this interaction in leishmaniasis. Here we review results from studies using three omics-based approaches to study VL caused by L. donovani in India.

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In addition to providing pathogen-specific immunity, vaccines can also confer nonspecific effects (NSEs) on mortality and morbidity unrelated to the targeted disease. Immunisation with live vaccines, such as the BCG vaccine, has generally been associated with significantly reduced all-cause infant mortality. In contrast, some inactivated vaccines, such as the diphtheria, tetanus, whole-cell pertussis (DTPw) vaccine, have been controversially associated with increased all-cause mortality especially in female infants in high-mortality settings.