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Research

Tobias Strunk MD, PhD, FRACP Head, Neonatal Health tobias.strunk@thekids.org.au Head, Neonatal Health Clinical Professor Tobias Strunk is a

Research

Dengue has emerged as a major public health problem in Bhutan, with increasing incidence and widening geographic spread over recent years. This study aimed to investigate the knowledge and clinical management of dengue among medical practitioners in Bhutan.

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Many children with intellectual disability live with medical comorbidities. This study examined the impacts of comorbidities on quality of life (QOL) of children with intellectual disabilities and whether impacts varied with caregiver perceptions that medical needs had been met.

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High risk for virus-induced asthma exacerbations in children is associated with an IRF7lo immunophenotype, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Here, we applied a Systems Biology approach to an animal model comprising rat strains manifesting high versus low susceptibility to experimental asthma, induced by virus/allergen coexposure, to elucidate the mechanism(s)-of-action of the high-risk asthma immunophenotype.

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The prognosis for high-risk childhood acute leukaemias remains dismal and established treatment protocols often cause long-term side effects in survivors. This study aims to identify more effective and safer therapeutics for these patients.

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Adult pertussis vaccination is increasingly recommended to control pertussis in the community. However, there is little data on the duration and kinetics of immunity to pertussis boosters in adults. We compared IgG responses to vaccination with a tetanus, low-dose diphtheria, low-dose acellular pertussis (Tdap) booster at 1 week, 1 month and 1 year post-vaccination in whole-cell (wP)-primed Australian paediatric healthcare workers who had received an adult Tdap booster 5-12 years previously, to those who received their first Tdap booster. Tdap vaccination was well tolerated in both groups.

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Developing new methods for modelling infectious diseases outbreaks is important for monitoring transmission and developing policy. In this paper we propose using semi-mechanistic Hawkes Processes for modelling malaria transmission in near-elimination settings. Hawkes Processes are well founded mathematical methods that enable us to combine the benefits of both statistical and mechanistic models to recreate and forecast disease transmission beyond just malaria outbreak scenarios.

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The success of immunotherapy that targets inhibitory T cell receptors for the treatment of multiple cancers has seen the anti-tumor immune response re-emerge as a promising biomarker of response to therapy. Longitudinal characterization of T cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME) helps us understand how to promote effective anti-tumor immunity. However, serial analyses at the tumor site are rarely feasible in clinical practice.

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Nutrition education is central to pediatric type 1 diabetes management. Dietary management guidelines for type 1 diabetes are evidence based, but implementation may be challenging and inconsistent.

Research

Congenital intracranial meningiomas are rare lesions. We present a case of congenital intraventricular cystic meningioma, initially characterized with fetal MRI and confirmed postnatally with histopathology. To our knowledge, this is the first in vivo description of a congenital meningioma with fetal MRI. The fetal MRI was able to characterize the lesion as an atypical intraventricular mass which was separate from the choroid plexus, differentiating the mass from a choroid plexus neoplasm.