Sunday is World Hepatitis Day.
New drugs can potentially turn around hepatitis infections but public health measures tackling alcohol abuse and obesity are the best tools to fight these diseases and their contribution to Australia’s $50 billion liver disease burden.
And in the Asia/Pacific 70 per cent or more of the population are infected with hepatitis B while 350,000 people die from hepatitis C.
Liver disease experts Professor Geoff McCaughan and Dr Nick Shackel are both available to speak over the weekend on these issues. Both are based at the Centenary Institute in Sydney.
Then next Thursday at 10 am the world’s smartest research aquarium will open in Townsville. Details are embargoed but this remarkable $35 million facility will transform our capacity to understand mysteries such as the synchronised spawning of coral, and help us stop the devastating plagues of crown-of-thorns starfish that have contributed to the loss of half the coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef in the past 27 years.
And this week’s Fresh Scientists are available to speak – topics below. They’ve all got recent discoveries revealed to the public for the first time this week – plus haikus and limericks that they performed at the pub this week as part of a boot camp in science communication.
- Solving the ocean’s mysteries with the world’s smartest aquarium
- Hope for hep C cure no excuse for risk-taking, expert warns
- Old bastard fossils, mixing drugs and alcohol, worms and dementia, detecting power failures – this week’s Freshies available to speak
Hope for Hep C cure no excuse for risk-taking, expert warns
World Hepatitis Day: Sunday 28 July
Australian liver disease specialists available for interviews
Exciting early indications of a cure for Hepatitis C do not mean we should become complacent about the risks of contracting the debilitating disease, a leading Australian researcher warns.
Professor Geoff McCaughan, head of the Liver Immunobiology Program at Sydney’s Centenary Research Institute, says preliminary results of a newly developed oral treatment regime for liver transplant patients with Hepatitis C were showing promising results.
“We are starting to see some dramatic responses with these drugs,” says Professor McCaughan, who also heads the liver transplant unit at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
“It’s too early to be certain yet, but these drugs potentially can turn around even end-stage liver disease. It’s looking like they can stop the Hepatitis C virus occurring after a liver transplant, and they can get rid of the virus in people who are waiting for a transplant.
“At present, people with Hepatitis C have the worst outcomes for patients receiving liver transplants. This could dramatically alter that picture.”
Liver diseases, including Hepatitis B and C, have an impact on the Australian economy 40 per cent greater than chronic kidney disease and Type 2 diabetes combined, resulting in a health burden cost of $50 billion a year.
And while the newly developed drugs are showing great promise in the treatment of Hepatitis C, prevention rather than cure remains a much better, and much cheaper, option.
“Public health measures in the fields of alcohol abuse and obesity are key strategies in the fight to reduce the burden of liver disease,” says Prof McCaughan.
Professor McCaughan’s comments came in the run-up to World Hepatitis Day on Sunday, July 28. The WHO sponsored annual event, which began in 2008, aims to raise awareness and funds for research to tackle Hepatitis B and C, which together infect more than 50 million people worldwide.
For those with Hepatitis C, the new oral therapies currently being tested offer a glimmer of hope for an eventual cure.
“This is all very new,” says Professor McCaughan. “There are only about 50 people around the world who are receiving these drugs. We have five of them at RPA – they have been enrolled in this study to eradicate the virus before their transplants to avoid the risk of doing badly afterwards.”
A follow-up study is planned for later this year, which will see another small group of Australian patients receive the drugs.
For more about the Centenary Institute’s liver program: www.centenary.org.au/p/ourresearch/liver
For more on World Hepatitis Day: www.worldhepatitisalliance.org/en/world-hepatitis-day-2013.html
For comment:
Prof Geoff McCaughan on (02) 9565 6125 or 0418212805
Dr Nick Shackel, Senior Lecturer, Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology on (02) 9565 6286 or 0434 603 129
Media Contacts:
Tamzin Byrne on 0432 974 400 or mailto:tamzin@scienceinpublic.com.au
Niall Byrne on 0407 131 977 or niall@scienceinpublic.com.au
Solving the ocean’s mysteries with the world’s smartest research aquarium
The launch of the National Sea Simulator with Innovation Minister Kim Carr
At the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville
Embargo, 11 am, Thursday 1 August
This $35 million dollar state-of-the-art experimental facility will enable researchers to conduct cutting edge research on tropical marine organisms not previously possible in Australia.
It will provide a quantum leap in Australia’s scientific capability to tackle issues such as the catastrophic impacts of crown-of-thorns starfish, the impact of rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification on reef and coastal ecosystems, and the resilience of tropical environments to the impacts of dredging, urban and agricultural pollution.
We’re pulling together some examples of the practical uses of SeaSim and can share those under embargo from Tuesday.
Fresh Science
This week’s Freshies are available to talk about their discoveries, the full stories are online at www.freshscience.org.au.
Aussie algae fuel green oil hope
Despite the claims of some, commercially viable fuels from algae have not yet been developed. But newly trialled native algae species provide real hope, a Queensland scientist has found.
Dr Evan Stephens and the team at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience, in collaboration with Germany’s Bielefeld University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, have identified fast-growing and hardy microscopic algae that could prove the key to cheaper and more efficient production of the alternative fuel.
Tiny fossils link ‘old bastard’ marsupials to South America and Africa
Two tiny fossils are set to overturn the conventional theory about the evolution of marsupials, which holds that there was a single migration from the part of the Gondwana ‘supercontinent’ that became South America to the part that became Australia.
“The origins of Australian marsupials suddenly got a lot more complicated!” says palaeontologist Dr Robin Beck, an ARC DECRA postdoctoral fellow at the University of NSW.
How worms and their genes could help us understand dementia and ageing
The discovery of a link between a specific gene and ageing in a species of worm could reveal valuable lessons for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
Low levels of the protein generated from the gene known as ‘tau’-also present in humans-not only hastens age-related changes in the brain of the worm, but also shortens the worm’s life, Sydney University PhD candidate Yee Lian Chew has found.
Electric fishes spark safer power line technology
Melbourne researchers have invented and patented a way of detecting and locating potential electrical faults along large stretches of power line before they occur.
The patented detection system, already being employed by local electricity companies, could help prevent the major discharges that lead to sparking and blackouts.
Mixing drugs and alcohol for better asthma inhalers
Asthma inhalers could soon become much more effective, thanks to a clever new way of making the particles they deliver invented by a Melbourne chemical engineer and his team.
Current puffer designs and typical size ranges of particles mean a large portion of the medication propelled into a patient’s throat remains there. Only a fraction reaches the lungs.
But Monash University lecturer Dr Meng Wai Woo and his team have now developed a method of making ultra-fine particles, which will make drug delivery much more consistent and efficient.