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The Infectious Disease Implementation Research Team is a multi-disciplinary group researching the best way to implement infectious disease prevention and treatment strategies to improve the wellbeing of children and teenagers.
The Strep A Translation team aim to understand the epidemiology of Strep A infections in Australia and the world. Alongside this, they explore the implementation of endgame recommendations, health economics and new horizons.
In 2024, the government of Western Australia introduced 'nirsevimab', a monoclonal antibody offering protection from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), for eligible infants. This study explores why parents of infants who were eligible to receive nirsevimab opted to decline or delay the immunisation.
Burkholderia pseudomallei is a facultative intracellular pathogen and the causative agent of melioidosis. Treatment of this deadly infection is both protracted and limited to only a select number of antibiotics. Not only can patients suffer adverse reactions to prolonged therapy, but resistance has also been reported in several clinical isolates.
Syphilis remains a global public health concern, particularly in pregnancy due to the risk of congenital syphilis. The WHO recommends benzathine penicillin G (BPG) as the standard treatment in pregnant women, whilst the optimal dosing strategy has not been established, particularly in relation to the impact of gestational age. This study sought to characterize the pharmacokinetics (PK) of a three-dose regimen of intramuscular BPG, given at weekly intervals, in pregnant women with syphilis.
Hepatitis B (HBV) prevalence is very high in pregnant women in the Dolpa district of Nepal, a region characterised by a remote geographic landscape and low vaccination coverage. Using mathematical modelling, we evaluated the impact of third-trimester tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) prophylaxis on HBV burden and estimated the time required to achieve HBV elimination in Dolpa.
We investigated the genetic and epigenetic regulation of the UBASH3A gene and its association with early-onset sepsis. Using matched whole blood DNA methylation, gene expression, genotypes, and immune cell counts from the EPIC-HIPC newborn cohort, we report that promoter methylation was negatively correlated with ontogenetic changes in UBASH3A gene expression and circulating CD3+ T-cell numbers.
Rhinoviruses (RV) are the most common respiratory viruses globally and a major cause of airway symptoms in children and individuals with asthma. Although more than 170 RV types exist across 3 species (RV-A, RV-B, RV-C), type-specific circulation patterns and age-related prevalence remain poorly defined.
Asymptomatic carriage of Streptococcus pyogenes (Strep A) may contribute to transmission, yet its role remains poorly understood and evidence on optimal detection methods is limited. While self-collected throat swabs are used in infectious disease surveillance, their value for identifying asymptomatic Strep A carriage in adults is uncertain. This pilot prospective cohort study, conducted at a Perth medical research institute between August and October 2024, assessed feasibility and acceptability of self-collection, with sensitivity as a secondary objective.
Disease spreading models such as the ubiquitous SIS compartmental model and its numerous variants are widely used to understand and predict the behavior of a given epidemic or information diffusion process. A common approach to imbue more realism to the spreading process is to constrain simulations to a network structure, where connected nodes update their disease state based on pairwise interactions along the edges of their local neighborhood.