As the first half of 2022 draws to a close, our researchers continue to investigate various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including an examination of the mortality rates during the third wave in 2021 and the need for a vaccines-plus strategy to reduce current transmission and defend against future variants. Meanwhile, other Alliance scientists are focused on similarly devastating health conditions such as skin cancer and sudden cardiac arrest, with world-leading research underway to find out how they can be prevented in future.
A Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute registry and genetic database project is helping researchers understand more about sudden cardiac arrest.
Monash University – Central Clinical School
More accurately measuring the difficulty of an operation in advance with NASA technology
A group of Melbourne surgeons, led by Dr Stephen Bell, in Monash University’s Department of Surgery who is also a surgeon at The Alfred, has adapted an index used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a way to measure an operation’s difficulty.
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Teasing out motivations for vegan and vegetarian diets and their relationship to disordered eating
It has long been thought that vegetarianism and veganism are related to an increased risk of disordered eating due to overlapping similarities in dietary rules. But previous research does not necessarily support this idea.
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Hormone-blocking breakthrough helps combat skin cancer recurrence
A Monash University researcher has helped discover how to reduce the recurrence of skin cancer tumours by blocking a naturally-occurring hormone that causes drug resistance in melanoma cells.
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Monash University – School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine
The third wave of COVID-19 delivers the highest mortality risk in Australian ICUs
According to a new study led by Monash University, of those admitted to the ICU with COVID-19, after accounting for age and how sick patients were, the third wave of the disease in Australia was associated with the highest risk of dying in hospital, in comparison with earlier waves.
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Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute
Funding awarded to help find answers for obesity and diabetes pandemic
Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute researcher Dr Yi Wang has been awarded a $20,000 Weary Dunlop Foundation grant for her work into the impact of a novel regulator named Trim28 on glucose intolerance, which is a known precursor to diabetes.
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Improving survival from sudden cardiac arrest – Hospital and Healthcare
Jessica Maris was feeding her baby when her husband Bryan, 31 and a keen cyclist, suffered a sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in bed. In a bid to expose the immense grief many thousands of Australian families are subjected to each year while the causes of SCA remain a mystery, Jessica shared her story at the inaugural National Summit for Cardiac Arrest held in Canberra in June. She hopes more can be done to understand and prevent cardiac arrests in the future.
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Burnet Institute
New vaccines to eliminate malaria by 2030
The global burden of malaria has increased, alongside the spread of drug-resistant infections. There is now a sense of urgency to develop more effective vaccines to combat the disease and accelerate towards elimination.
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Legal, safe, timely and compassionate abortion care is an essential health service
Burnet Institute is concerned and dismayed at the decision of the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade and thereby remove protections for legal abortion and reproductive rights.
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A vaccines-plus strategy: our defence against COVID-19
COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be brilliant, but vaccination alone is not enough. Like any medical intervention, they’re not perfect. Reproduced from Impact Winter edition.
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