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Improving follow-up care for pre-term Aboriginal babies; developing a penicillin for rheumatic heart disease; and finding a curative strategy for cystic fibrosis are just some of the projects to attract grants in the first Telethon-Perth Children's Hospital Research Fund.

Most of the 17 projects to receive joint funding from the State Government and the Channel 7 Telethon Trust are being carried out at The University of Western Australia and its affiliates, Princess Margaret Hospital and the Lung Institute of WA.

Announcing the funding today (Friday) Health Minister Kim Hames said each project had the potential to lead to health benefits for WA children and for children nationally and internationally.

Other UWA-based projects include:

• Preventing influenza morbidity and mortality in WA children through vaccination;
• Examining the endocrine, metabolic and psycho-social late-effects of cancer therapy in childhood;
• Discovering the sense of touch: implications for recovery for children with cerebral palsy;
• Assessing the effects of maternal use of opioid pharmacotherapies on health outcomes in exposed children:
• Examining the effects of vitamin D supplementation in infancy on immune development;
• Defining a protective microbiome in otitis media and identification of potential probiotics;
• Postnatal steroids and antenatal chorioamnionitis: between the Scylla and Charybdis of inflammation and apoptosis after pre-term birth;
• Fibre-optic measurement of airway surface liquid pH in children with cystic fibrosis;
• The study and acceptability of mixed whole cell/acellular pertussis vaccine schedules in infants to prevent sensitisation to food allergies: a pilot study;
• Anti-microbial proteins and peptides to prevent late-onset sepsis in per-term infants; and
• Infection or allergy? Understanding the pathogenesis of adeno-tonsillar hypertrophy.

Media references

Michael Sinclair-Jones (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 00 700 783