A Mackay ICU doctor is researching immune response to a deadly soil-borne bacterial disease surging in case numbers in the far north in a bid to help tailor treatment.
The number of patients with the life-threatening bacterial infection melioidosis has increased to 41 in North Queensland this year after the recent wet weather, including 27 cases in Cairns, 11 in Townsville and three in Mackay*. Tragically, there have been two deaths.
Mackay Base Hospital Intensivist Dr Eamon Raith was awarded funding late last year from the Tropical Australian Academic Health Centre (TAAHC) to begin research into immune dysregulation in sepsis due to Burkholderia pseudomallei infection (melioidosis) in North Queensland.
Dr Raith said the bacterial infection was common in tropical areas and is spread through contact with contaminated soil, air or water.
He had chosen to focus his sepsis research on the bacteria which causes melioidosis as it had such critical and devastating consequences for sufferers including death.
“The problem is we don’t know which patients are going to develop sepsis due to melioidosis and which people are going to have just a mild infection,” Dr Raith said.
“We are looking into what different people’s responses are to that infection; whether there are differences in immune response amongst people with severe infection and in intensive care.
“North Queensland and Tropical Australia have a broadly different pattern of infections to the rest of the country, because we have tropical diseases and a different population.
“By knowing specifically what we’re dealing with here in North Queensland we can provide specific care to people with sepsis and melioidosis in North Queensland. This research will ultimately help to provide personalized and precision medicine.”
There were 67 cases of melioidosis in Queensland between January and November last year including three in Mackay and eleven in Townsville.
Dr Raith’s 24-month observational study will compare the physiological data of between 20 and 40 intensive care patients with melioidosis in Mackay and Townsville hospitals and their immune response.
Research was vital to improving healthcare and improving outcomes for patients, Dr Raith said.
“We need to continue to evolve specific and precise methods of treating severe illness and infection and that’s really why research is so important,” he said.
“It’s really important for regional centres and for rural and remote practitioners to engage in research because that’s how they provide the data for new treatments and new technologies.”
Dr Raith’s regionally focussed research projects may also help identify future issues which could exacerbate the pre-dominance of life-threatening disease.
“Areas outside North Queensland may also become more subtropical or tropical in the future due to climate change, potentially extending the ecosphere of this bacteria,” he said.
“So that’s another reason research such as this is important, as this could potentially become an even bigger problem.”
Dr Raith has also earned a TAAHC Clinician Researcher Fellowship for his work on sepsis subphenotypes in North Queensland and was awarded a Churchill Fellowship last year for his research into treating critical brain injuries.
