Media Releases - Research 2004

November 2004

Multi-million dollar funding to get premature babies’ oxygen just right  

The Women’s and Children’s Hospital is part of an Australia-wide study which has been awarded $2.2million dollars from the National Health and Medical Research Council to find out how much oxygen very premature babies need. The study will involve 20 neonatal intensive care units across the country and aims to enrol 1200 babies more than 12 weeks premature.

World-first discovery of a novel Rett Syndrome gene

Researchers from the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in collaboration with colleagues in New South Wales have discovered a novel gene which, when mutated, causes Rett Syndrome and may also be contributing factor in other disorders including autism.

October 2004

South Australian and Queensland research promises better health for newborns

Researchers from the Adelaide-based Child Health Research Institute (CHRI) and Women’s and Children’s Hospital (WCH), working collaboratively with the Queensland-based CRC for Diagnostics have recently established promising new tests to help in the diagnosis of infection in new-born premature babies.

September 2004

Wash those germs away!

Last year in Spring a rotavirus epidemic with severe vomiting, diarrhoea and gut pain hit Adelaide and there is every chance this will happen again this year. During November and December in 2003, over 1000 children presented at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital suffering from gastroenteritis. This was merely the tip of the iceberg.

August 2004

Reflux of stomach acid unlikely to cause irritable babies

Researchers from the Women's and Children's Hospital have found that acid-suppressing drugs used to treat reflux in babies in the first year of life do not overcome irritability.

New vaccine trial to reduce the risk of cervical cancer

The Paediatric Trials Unit research team at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital is seeking female volunteers aged between 10 and 14 years to take part in a study testing a vaccine against Human Papillomavirus (HPV), a cause of cervical cancer.

July 2004

Search on for families with inherited tendency to develop blood cell cancers

Researchers at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital’s (WCH) Familial Cancer Unit want to find out why cancers of the blood or lymph cells (leukaemia, lymphoma, and other haematological cancers) occur repeatedly in some families.

June 2004

Dummies no threat to breastfeeding in premature babies

Dummy use does not affect success in breast feeding of premature babies, according to researchers at the Women's and Children's Hospital (WCH).
Dummies are widely used for premature babies in hospital. But until now, whether they had an adverse affect on breastfeeding was not known. This is the first study to look at the effect of dummies on breastfeeding in preterm infants.

May 2004

World-first common epilepsy gene discovery

Scientists at the Women's and Children's Hospital, in collaboration with Bionomics Limited, the University of Melbourne and a US group in Tennessee, have identified the first ‘susceptibility' gene for the common forms of epilepsy.

March 2004

'Hands on' gene cloning for senior students

On Tuesday March 30th, as part of Women's and Children's Hospital Week, thirty four Year 11 and Year 12 science students from six Adelaide schools will visit the Hospital and learn first-hand about the importance of medical research and experience research in progress during interactive tours in two laboratories.

SMS to help reduce hospital waiting lists?

From June 2002 to June 2003, over 11% of outpatient appointments at the Women's and Children's Hospital (WCH) were missed, with no explanation given ahead of time by patients or their families that the appointment would be missed.
The WCH's Department of Pulmonary Medicine has taken steps to minimise missed appointments by conducting a pilot study where SMS text message reminders were sent to patients to help improve use of expensive healthcare resources already set in place for their appointment, as well as to reduce waiting-lists.

January 2004

New gene identified for intellectual disability: SA-named Sutherland-Haan Syndrome

Researchers from the Women's and Children's Hospital Adelaide, as part of an international collaboration, have identified a gene implicated in a type of intellectual disability called Sutherland-Haan Syndrome, named after Prof Grant Sutherland and Assoc Prof Eric Haan from the Hospital. This is one of only a handful of gene defect syndromes to be named after Australians and the first for South Australia.

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