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Prevalence of impetigo (skin sores) remains high in remote Australian Aboriginal communities, Fiji, and other areas of socio-economic disadvantage. Skin sore infections, driven primarily in these settings by Group A Streptococcus (GAS) contribute substantially to the disease burden in these areas. Despite this, estimates for the force of infection, infectious period and basic reproductive ratio-all necessary for the construction of dynamic transmission models-have not been obtained.
A year after launching the first National Healthy Skin Guideline to address record rates of skin infections in Australia’s Indigenous communities, The Kids Research Institute Australia has released a new resource as part of the guideline.
The situation with COVID-19 is constantly evolving, and there is an extraordinary amount of information circulating which can be both overwhelming and difficult to navigate.
The skin is the largest and most visible organ of the human body. As such, skin infections can have a significant impact on overall health, social wellbeing and self-image.
Households are known to be high-risk locations for the transmission of communicable diseases. Numerous modelling studies have demonstrated the important role of households in sustaining both communicable diseases outbreaks and endemic transmission, and as the focus for control efforts. However, these studies typically assume that households are associated with a single dwelling and have static membership.
Congratulations to Associate Professor Asha Bowen, who has been awarded the 2022 Frank Fenner Award for Advanced Research in Infectious Diseases.
Skin conditions most frequently encountered in paediatric practice include infections, infestations, atopic dermatitis, and acne. Skin of colour refers to skin with increased melanin and darker pigmentation, and reflects global racial and ethnic diversity. Managing skin conditions in skin of colour requires health equity nuance, which is rarely explicitly taught.
Acute rheumatic fever is an autoimmune disorder resulting from Group A Streptococcus pharyngitis or impetigo in children and adolescents, which may evolve to rheumatic heart disease (RHD) with persistent cardiac valve damage. RHD causes substantial mortality and morbidity globally, predominantly among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, with an interplay of social determinants of health and genetic factors determining overall risk.
The social determinants of health such as access to income, education, housing and healthcare, strongly shape the occurrence of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease at the household, community and national levels.
Improving our understanding of superficial Streptococcus pyogenes (Strep A) carriage and transmission necessitates robust sampling methods. Here, we compared the effect of storing swab samples in fridge (+4°C) and freezer (-20°C) conditions on the recovery of laboratory-cultured S. pyogenes.