The Clinical Value Of Serology And Molecular Tests For Diagnosing Invasive Aspergillosis In At-risk Hematology Patients
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,095,500.00
Summary
Aspergillus is a fungus found in soil, on farms and on construction sites. In those whose immune system is impaired it causes severe infection. The people who are particularly at high-risk of Aspergillus infection (called Invasive Aspergillosis) are those with acute leukaemia on chemotherapy or post bone marrow transplantation. Currently 15% of those at high-risk get Invasive Aspergillosis and 58-93% of those infected die. The main reason for this high death rate is that our current diagnostic t ....Aspergillus is a fungus found in soil, on farms and on construction sites. In those whose immune system is impaired it causes severe infection. The people who are particularly at high-risk of Aspergillus infection (called Invasive Aspergillosis) are those with acute leukaemia on chemotherapy or post bone marrow transplantation. Currently 15% of those at high-risk get Invasive Aspergillosis and 58-93% of those infected die. The main reason for this high death rate is that our current diagnostic tests are not good at detecting infection or often only detect the infection at advanced stages when treatment is ineffective. Because of the limitations of current diagnostic tests the current practice is to give empiric antifungal therapy (EAFT) early to treat Invasive Aspergillosis. However studies have demonstrated that this therapy has only resulted in a minor reduction in the mortality rates and it causes significant drug toxicity. It is a suboptimal treatment modality. New tests have been developed to diagnose Invasive Aspergillosis. These tests are for the detection of an Aspergillus protein in blood and for the detection of Aspergillus DNA in the blood. Available data suggests that these new tests are sensitive in the detection of Invasive Aspergillosis. Also other studies suggest that these new tests make an early diagnosis and seem to be able to monitor responses to treatment. However no study has been performed to date which demonstrates that the use of these tests can impact on important patient outcomes. This trial is designed to determine whether the use of the new tests to guide therapy will help improve treatment of Invasive Aspergillosis, reduce drug toxicity and reduce the death rate in the high-risk patients as compared with the current standard method of diagnosis and treatment with EAFT. If the trial is successful then this represents a significant advancement in the treatment and survival of leukaemic and bone marrow transplantation patients.Read moreRead less
Fast effective clustering technologies for highly dynamic massive networks. Clustering is a fundamental data mining and analysis task. In an interconnected evolving world, friendships and information flows are modelled as large dynamic networks. Structural clustering and correlation clustering are important and well-studied approaches for static networks; for evolving networks, where links appear and disappear over time, we lack efficient techniques. Anticipated outcomes are new practical cluste ....Fast effective clustering technologies for highly dynamic massive networks. Clustering is a fundamental data mining and analysis task. In an interconnected evolving world, friendships and information flows are modelled as large dynamic networks. Structural clustering and correlation clustering are important and well-studied approaches for static networks; for evolving networks, where links appear and disappear over time, we lack efficient techniques. Anticipated outcomes are new practical clustering algorithms for dynamic networks – with performance guarantees of efficiency and clustering quality – and prototype software, guiding us to pick a good clustering. Expected benefits include better understanding of spread in evolving social networks, accelerating the software testing cycle, and improved topic detection.Read moreRead less
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In the emerging field of functional genomics, diagnosis of certain diseases is enhanced by determining which genes act together. Diffe ....Fast, practical and effective algorithms for clustering with advice. To maintain a safe and healthy society, government and industry need high quality immunization and national security databases. Since we cannot afford to have duplicate, incomplete and conflicting records that refer to the same person, we unify them by identifying clusters of related records.
In the emerging field of functional genomics, diagnosis of certain diseases is enhanced by determining which genes act together. Different experimental runs might result in different clusterings of genes: we need one consensus clustering that summarizes the experimental outcomes.
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