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The
Florey Medical Research Fund
helping to find answers to:
A collaborative research team headed by A/Prof Gary Wittert was awarded the $450,000 Florey Research Grant to undertake a major study into the health and ageing of Australian men. The winning research team has strong cross-disciplinary linkages and involves researchers from the Department of Medicine, the Department of Public Health, and the School of Molecular & Biomedical Science, as well as from the Royal Adelaide Hospital, the SA Department of Human Services, Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, Hanson Institute, CSIRO, and Glenside Hospital. The
project, which aims to study 1000 men in Adelaide's north-western suburbs,
is believed to be the first of its kind in Australia to attempt to identify
the wide range of factors that contribute to Australian
Health issues relating to men have long been neglected. As compared to women, more men die in every age group except the over 65's. This difference in health status is largely due to diseases and accidents that are potentially preventable (diabetes, heart disease, cancer, work place injuries etc.) The cost of this is enormous; to families, employers and the community as a whole. South
Australia has the oldest age profile of all Australian states. This
demographic feature has economic and social consequences as well as providing
a particular challenge for the health care system. Government health
expenditure accounts for approximately 24% of the state budget. This
is likely to increase as the population ages. A number of peak health
and government bodies have highlighted the need for a longitudinal study
of men's health. The Florey Adelaide Male Ageing Study is an important
step in addressing these concerns.
The 2002/3 grant was $100,000 awarded to Professor James Paton, Dr Adrienne Paton and Dr Renato Morona in the Department of Molecular Biosciences. This important cutting-edge research is part of a multi-pronged program in Professor Paton's laboratory, addressing one of the major challenges that faces medical science in the 21st century - the control of infectious disesases. When antibiotics such as penicillin first became available sixty or so years ago, they were hailed as "wonder drugs" which would rid the world of major bacterial killers, such as those which cause pneumonia, TB, or diarrhoeal diseases. However, bacteria evolve very rapidly and on-going and sometimes indiscriminate use of antibiotics has produced strains which are resistant to many such drugs. This has necessitated continued investment of large sums of money by drug companies developing new antibiotics. In spite of this, bacterial infectious diseases continue to kill more people than any other disease group, and rates of bacterial resistance to antibiotics are steadily climbing. A major component of Professor Paton's research program is directed at the development of cheap and effective vaccines for the prevention of middle ear infections, meningitis and pneumonia caused by the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae. This organism exhibits very high rates of resistance to multiple antibiotics and is currently responsible for more human deaths than any other infectious agent. In
this research Professor Paton wants to look one step further and explore
whether there are alternative ways of blocking interactions between pathogenic
bacteria and their hosts. He and his team, for example, are currently
engineering harmless bacteria which can bind toxins produced by pathogenic
bacteria in the gut, and prevent those toxins from being absorbed by a
patient.
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