Medical Research

A key problem with kidney transplantation is the potential for the patient’s immune system to reject the kidney. Hence all transplant patients are given medications to suppress their immune systems. If their immune system is too suppressed, patients are at risk of severe infection; if it is not suppressed enough, they are at risk of rejecting the kidney. Our current methods for monitoring the degree of immune suppression are crude and episodes of both severe infection and organ rejection are common. There is currently no simple and practical blood test which quantifies how suppressed the immune system is. Such a blood test would allow us to get the doses of immunosuppressive drugs just right in each patient, using an individually tailored approach. 

Blood stream infection caused by bacteria known as ESCaPMs (an acronum standing for their names: Enterobacter, Serratia, Citrobacter, Providencia and Morganella) is common and promlematic, with over 45 cases at JHH annually. 

Over 70,000 hip and knee replacements are performed in Australia each year. Unfortunately approximately 2% of these will become infected and there is a lack of high quality evidence to guide the management of these prosthetic joint infections (PJI).