Protecting Hyposplenic Children and Adults: Identifying Optimal Immunisation Regimens

Funding Activity

Website
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/546424

Funding Status
Closed

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Funded Activity Summary

Children and adults without normal spleen function are at massively increased risk of overwhelming infection with the pneumococcus bacteria, with 200 times the risk of death from sepsis compared with the normal community. Poor spleen function can be due to an absent spleen (eg after surgery following a car accident) or an underlying medical condition (eg thalassaemia or cancer therapy). Thousands of Australians are affected by this condition and need extra protection from daily antibiotics and additional immunsiations against pneumococcus. A new vaccine against pneumococcus was introduced for Australian infants routinely in 2005 and has prevented many from developing pneumococcal meningitis, sepsis and pneumonia. We wish to see whether this new vaccine, when used with the older existing pneumococcal vaccine, will better protect older children and adults with poor spleen function from the devastating effects of pneumococcus. We will compare different ways of using these vaccines to try to identify the most protective vaccination plan for this vulnerable group of Australians.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2009

End Date: 01-01-2014

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $472,044.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Infectious Diseases

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

immune response | immunisation | immunocompromised patients | sepsis | splenectomy

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