Intensive Care patients more often than not, develop kidney failure requiring dialysis. Unfortunately there is little information available to inform clinicians of appropriate doses for antibiotics in these patients, putting them at an increased risk of death from ineffective treatment. Our project aims to develop dosing guidelines for the many types of dialysis used globally to achieve concentrations in the blood that optimise antibiotic effects in these most critically ill patients.
Severe sepsis is characterised by organ dysfunction secondary to infection, typically bacterial. We will quantify bacteria in the bloodstream of patients with septic shock, the most severe form of sepsis, to determine the relationship between bacterial load and clinical outcomes. We hypothesise that the bacterial load on presentation and the change in bacterial load over time determines survival and the evolution of organ failure in patients with septic shock.
Rapid Prediction Of Antibiotic Resistance In The Enterobacteriaceae: Making Use Of Restricted Diversity In Mobile Resistance Gene Pools
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$385,032.00
Summary
Immediate treatment of patients suffering life-threatening bacterial infections with effective antibiotics greatly improves their chances of survival, but antibiotic resistance increasingly complicates this treatment. Currently such resistance cannot be detected in time to help decide the best antibiotic to use. We aim to define a small set of the many known antibiotic resistance genes that can be used accurately predict resistance in rapid tests using modern detection systems.
Antibiotics have different effects on our own bacterial ecology, with sometimes unexpected detrimental effects. In this project, we will study this in detail and particularly address the question of 'good' and 'bad' antibiotics and how to identify them. National antibiotic policy and the deployment of 'decontamination' strategies in the critically ill are directly related issues and we expect to inform these important policy debates.