– ABOUT

Sepsis

Infectious diseases are the second most important cause of death globally after heart disease, and kill more people than cancer. Severe sepsis and septic shock have a mortality rate of 20-40% in the setting of optimal resuscitation in wealthy countries and are responsible for the loss of millions of health dollars and tens of thousands of lives every year in Australia. Antibiotic intervention remains one of the most powerful and cost-effective medical interventions but is under severe threat from antibiotic resistance.

Analysis suggests that resistant pathogens may spread through the co-evolution of increased virulence, crucial in disseminating resistant strains. A comprehensive grasp of invasiveness is vital for developing novel clinical management methods, including strategies to diminish virulence without fostering antimicrobial resistance. Achieving this necessitates collaborative efforts by multidisciplinary teams to pinpoint shared pathogenic pathways for the early diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of life-threatening bacterial infections.

This Bioplatforms Australia Framework Data Initiative has been led since 2019 by Prof Mark Walker from the University of Queensland and has brought together researchers from several leading Australian research-intensive universities including the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, Monash University, University of New South Wales, University of Technology Sydney, and the University of Adelaide.

The data from this initiative has been published and is publicly accessible from Nature Communications.