Defining Risk And Mechanisms Of Permucosal Transmission For Acute HCV Infection Within High-risk Populations.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$395,182.00
Summary
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is usually transmitted by blood-to-blood contact. The risk of transmission by sexual contact has been thought to be low. However, in recent years increasing hepatitis C infection has been documented among HIV-positive gay men, with sexual contact the most most likely means of infection in the majority of cases. This grant will use established cohorts to define levels of hepatitis C risk through sexual contact among homosexual men to inform public health strategies.
Modelling The Evolution Of Hepatitis C Virus By Integrating Large Sequence- And Immunological-databases.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$289,980.00
Summary
Two hundred million people are infected with the Hepatitis C virus. There is no vaccine and the rate at which new strains of the virus arise enable it to evade the human immune system. This study aims to decipher how new viral strains are generated and transmitted, thereby enabling the development of new vaccines.
Injecting Drug Users: Social Networks And Molecular Epidemiology Of The Hepatitis C Virus
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$543,868.00
Summary
The hepatitis C virus (HCV) continues to spread among injecting drug users (IDUs) in Australia at a very high rate, despite success in preventing the spread of HIV in the same groups; the complete reasons for this remain unclear. There is an urgent need for the HCV epidemic among IDUs to be contained. To do so, we must better understand the ways in which it is spreading among IDUs. Much is known about risk behaviours of individual IDUs and how they contribute to HCV transmission; much less is kn ....The hepatitis C virus (HCV) continues to spread among injecting drug users (IDUs) in Australia at a very high rate, despite success in preventing the spread of HIV in the same groups; the complete reasons for this remain unclear. There is an urgent need for the HCV epidemic among IDUs to be contained. To do so, we must better understand the ways in which it is spreading among IDUs. Much is known about risk behaviours of individual IDUs and how they contribute to HCV transmission; much less is known about how these behaviours are modified by the influence of the IDUs peer group, especially their immediate and intimate social networks. Despite its importance in influencing attitudes and behaviours, and therefore HCV transmission, this has never been studied in Australia, nor, in relation to HCV, in the world. We hope that by studying social and risk networks of IDUs we shall discover new ways in which control of the HCV epidemic can be achieved in Australia. We intend to do this among two groups of young IDUs, one of Vietnamese ethnicity, located in the one suburb of Melbourne. By using field techniques for gathering information (ethnography), and sophisticated analytic techniques to understand how these networks are formed and influence behaviours, we hope to be able to identify interventions which work at the level of the social group rather than the individual in bringing about the behaviour change necessary to prevent HCV transmission. To ensure that the risk networks we describe are as influential as they appear, and to discover more about the variability of HCV, we will also be investigating the relationship between the various strains of HCV in members of the IDU networks, particularly as another measure of the connectedness of networks and network members. This will be done using sophisticated genetic analysis of the HCV obtained from network members by blood test.Read moreRead less