(Formerly known as Central Clinical School)
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| Professor Terry O'Brien explains Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). See video |
Central Clinical School's annual public lecture was given on 29 October by Professor Terry O'Brien, our Head of School, and a long time clinician-researcher specialising in epilepsy.
Prof O'Brien ran through a case study, where the research is up to, why SUDEP happens and how it might be prevented.
See video.
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| Dr Emma Foster and A/Prof Zanfina Ademi explain how treating epilepsy greatly reduces its health economic burden. See video |
New data from Monash University reveal the enormous cost of epilepsy in Australia – costing more than 14,000 excess deaths up to age 70 years, $32.4 billion of lost gross domestic product (GDP), and $4.1 billion in direct healthcare costs.
The researchers also showed that a 10% improvement in the treatment of seizures in patients with the disease would save the economy a staggering $1.1 billion in direct health care costs and A$7.8 billion in GDP over the working lifetime of people with epilepsy.
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| Dr Maithili Sashindranath is senior author on a study looking at at different stroke mouse models for improved stroke therapies. You can follow @dr_maithili on Twitter |
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| Dr Jessica O'Brien |
The sub-Faculty of Translational Medicine and Public Health at the Alfred precinct is celebrating a flurry of funding from Heart Foundation Australia, who released details on their latest grant recipients this week. Fifty-three projects worth $13.1 million, all investigating the causes, treatment and prevention of heart disease, stroke and related disorders were announced. Congratulations to all of our very worthy winners! See story.
Cardiologist and PhD student at the Central Clinical School, Dr Jessica O’Brien, received an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award for her project Quantifying myocardial inflammation in acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. This grant is focused on capacity building and increasing Indigenous representation at all levels of research.
Jessica will use cardiac MRI to identify myocardial inflammation in acute rheumatic fever (ARF) with the aim of improving diagnostic accuracy and predicting which patients are most likely to progress to rheumatic heart disease (RHD). Improving these would ensure that antibiotic prophylaxis and follow-up can be optimised accordingly with the overall goal of helping to reduce RHD prevalence and severity.
She says, "Because of my background, I have always been interested in Indigenous health, but it wasn't until I started physician training that I saw the extent of the disparity in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. One of the many contributors to this is the disproportionately low numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals and researchers."
Jessica is supervised by Dr Andrew Taylor in the Department of Diabetes.
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