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The Kids Research Institute Australia researcher, Niamh Troy, has been named a joint winner of the Exxon Mobile Student Scientist of the Year award at the Premier’s Science Awards.

A project to uncover treatable traits to improve the lung health of people born preterm has been made possible thanks to a $1.99 million Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) grant. 

Respiratory disease remains one of the most significant complications of preterm birth, with lasting consequences.

Researchers developing a world-first treatment that targets an underlying cause of asthma have secured a $499,640 grant from the Future Health, Research and Innovation Fund – Innovation Seed Fund.

Each year, 11% (15 million) of the world’s babies are delivered before 37 weeks’ gestation.

Differential cell counts is a challenging task when applying computer vision algorithms to pathology. Existing approaches to train cell recognition require high availability of multi-class segmentation and/or bounding box annotations and suffer in performance when objects are tightly clustered.

In this study we assessed the effects of antigen exposure in mice pre‐sensitized with allergen following viral infection on changes in lung function, cellular responses and tight junction expression.

The link between respiratory and vascular health is well documented in adult populations. Impaired lung function is consistently associated with thicker arteries and higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. However, there are limited data on this relationship in young children and the studies that exist have focussed on populations at high risk of cardiorespiratory morbidity.

There is no consensus on how best to measure responses to interventions among children and adults with cystic fibrosis (CF). We have systematically reviewed and summarised the characteristics and measurement properties of tests and tools that have been used to capture outcomes in studies among people with CF, including their reliability, validity and responsiveness. This review is intended to guide researchers when selecting tests or tools for measuring treatment effects in CF trials. A consensus set of these tests and tools could improve consistency in how outcomes are captured and thereby facilitate comparisons and synthesis of evidence across studies.

Structural and functional defects within the lungs of children with cystic fibrosis (CF) are detectable soon after birth and progress throughout preschool years often without overt clinical signs or symptoms. By school age, most children have structural changes such as bronchiectasis or gas trapping/hypoperfusion and lung function abnormalities that persist into later life. Despite improved survival, gains in forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) achieved across successive birth cohorts during childhood have plateaued, and rates of FEV1 decline in adolescence and adulthood have not slowed. This suggests that interventions aimed at preventing lung disease should be targeted to mild disease and commence in early life.