Recent CCS publications: 7-14 December

Newly promoted, A/Prof Eric Chow
is featured twice in this
week's publications. 

Recent publications for Central Clinical School affiliated authors in the following departments. Note, browse down this entry for complete publications list. Linked headings for each section are to the departments' home pages.

• Diabetes 
• Infectious Diseases
• Neuroscience
• Melbourne Sexual Health Centre

Infectious Diseases inaugural course a runaway success!

Prof Jay Fishman speaking at the course

The Department of Infectious Diseases at AMREP has for the first time offered a course on infection in the immuno-compromised host.

The course was born of the infectious diseases physician-researchers' clinical experience of managing immuno-compromised patients, including those suffering from cancer, those who have had transplants, and those taking monoclonal therapies, and the need to incorporate the most recent research findings into patient management.

Capacity audience for the course

The course was endorsed by the Australian Society of Infectious Diseases. We'll be publishing further highlights and more detail about the course, as it's planned to be run again in 2018. This year's was fully subscribed with 200 attendees and a long wait list.

Congratulations to Professor Anton Peleg for ASM award

Professor Anton Peleg with the award
Photo: Anne Crawford

Professor Anton Peleg has won the Australian Society of Microbiology’s bioMerieux ASM Identifying Resistance Award.

The award is given on the basis of career achievements in the field of the identification of bacterial resistance to antimicrobials in a clinical setting.

The award committee took into account the quality and originality of Professor Peleg’s published research and service to Australian microbiology in general.

Professor Peleg is an international expert in the field of hospital-acquired infections and antimicrobial resistance, and has been the recipient of many awards including the prestigious 2013 Commonwealth Ministers Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research.

He will receive his recent award at the ASM Conference in Perth on 3rd July. See more. 

Perspectives: How much do you know about infectious disease issues? Take the Burnet quiz and find out

Take the quiz

How much do you know about infectious disease issues? Find out with the 'Which Deadly Disease?' quiz to learn more about some of the diseases that threaten millions of people around the world today.

Will you take the quiz too? Click here to start it now: https://which-deadly-disease.com/burnet-quiz?utm_source=svtqpgemlsh

It's been put together by researchers at Burnet Institute who have made exciting discoveries that could ease the suffering caused by diseases such as malaria, TB and hepatitis C.

It's quick and easy to complete, and it's full of fascinating and surprising facts about the world's deadliest diseases. 

[CCS blog editor Julia Veitch's self-congratulatory note: I got 12/12! Comes from working here at AMREP]

Which type of polio vaccine is best?

By Dr Jodie Abramovitch

The current polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin in 1961 and is a live-attenuated, orally administered vaccine (OPV). Live-attenuated means that the polio virus is alive but unable to cause disease. In settings with high childhood mortality, the OPV is believed to have non-specific effects that allows for protection against other childhood infections such as paralytic poliomyelitis (also known as infantile paralysis caused by the polio virus), tuberculosis and measles. This non-specific protection is thought to be able to reduce mortality to infectious diseases, particularly in childhood, by up to 17%. The significance of this protection is controversial.

Professor Magda Plebanski

To reduce the incidence of poliomyelitis which is around 75 cases worldwide per year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended the OPV be replaced by an inactivated form (IPV) of the polio virus. Inactivated means the virus used in the vaccine is dead.

In a recent correspondence published in The Lancet, a group of physicians and scientists, including Professor Magdalena Plebanski from the Department of Immunology and Pathology, voiced their concern at a potential change to the form of the current polio vaccine from OPV to IPV. It was noted that previous evidence suggests that the IPV does not confer the same non-specific protection as the OPV. Therefore, the IPV may be associated with an increase in childhood mortality (caused by a range of different infectious diseases). The authors postulated that for every case of poliomyelitis that is reduced by the IPV about 4000 extra deaths due to other infectious diseases (resulting in 300 000 additional deaths each year) may occur that could have been prevented by the OPV.

The authors of this correspondence concluded by urging the WHO to conduct randomised trials of the two different forms of polio vaccine before phasing out the OPV. This would allow for a better understanding of the non-specific protection that each of the polio vaccines provides against other infectious diseases. The results of these trials would inform whether the IPV leads to a higher infectious disease mortality overall when compared to the OPV, as well as whether the OPV and IPV may be administered alongside one another in children to prevent poliomyelitis and keep infectious disease mortality low.

Reference: Fish EN, Flanagan KL, Furman D, Klein SL, Kollmann TR, Jeppesen DL, Levy O, Marchant A, Namachivayam S, Netea MG, Plebanski M,Rowland-Jones SL, Selin LK, Shann F, Whittle HC.  Changing oral vaccine to inactivated polio vaccine might increase mortality. Lancet. 2016 Mar; 387:1054-5.
doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)00661-9.