Antibiotics are wrongly being prescribed for infections where they won’t work and cutting this down could help combat resistance. But change isn’t as easy as just providing the means.
Flu virus mutates so quickly that one year’s vaccine won’t work on the next year’s common strains. But a new way to create vaccines, called ‘rational design,’ might pave the way for more lasting solutions.
From November 1, the shingles (herpes zoster) vaccine will be available for free to people aged 70 to 79 years. So how and why do you get shingles, and who should be vaccinated?
New research shows common local mosquitoes aren’t able to spread Zika. This means Australia is unlikely to see a major outbreak of the disease. But a risk remains in northern Queensland.
Wastewater treatment systems around the world are hamstrung by outdated tests that don’t identify a growing array of pathogens or identify the sources of pollutants.
Benjamin Cowie, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity
Hepatitis A, B, C, D and E are very different viruses. Hepatitis A is genetically closer to the common cold than it is to hepatitis B. Hepatitis C is closer to the virus that causes dengue fever.
Public health experts enlist the molecular biology tools that create genetically modified organisms – as well as the GMOs themselves – in the fight against emerging infectious diseases.
It took a computer to discover the potential threat of a drug-resistant strain of swine flu that was about to spread from New South Wales. So how close did we come to a global pandemic?
Director, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital and Consultant Physician, Department of Infectious Diseases, Alfred Hospital and Monash University, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity