Other infectious diseases of global public health significance

抗生素耐药性、病毒性肝炎和可导致全球流行病（如流感）的感染给人类健康带来重大负担。我们的研究主要集中在以下几个方面：1）抗生素耐药性。目标之一是看看我们是否可以用较短的抗生素疗程来治疗肺炎等常见感染。另一个是看看短时间内使用两种抗生素是否可以改善人们血液感染的结果。最后，我们是否可以找到不再广泛使用的旧抗生素的新用途，但可能对医院中越来越常见的耐药细菌非常有效;2）丙型肝炎。现在有几种耐受性非常好的口服药物，只需治疗12-24周即可治愈>90%的丙型肝炎患者。然而，它们非常昂贵，而且不广泛使用。我们正在计划一项研究，看看人们是否可以治愈，甚至更短的治疗疗程之间的4-6周。3)感染“全球化”。2009年的“猪流感”爆发，距离SARS仅6年，提醒我们为全球流行病做好准备是多么重要。我们是两项国际流感研究的一部分，试图了解流感如何随着时间的推移而变化，以及哪些因素预测谁会在感染流感后表现不佳。我们现在正在试验一种新的治疗方法（FLU-IVIG），用于那些因流感住院的重症患者。

Antibiotic resistance, viral hepatitis and infections which can cause a global epidemic such as influenza, place major burdens on human health. Our research focusses on the following:1) Antibiotic resistance. One of objectives is to see if we can treat common infections such as pneumonia with shorter courses of antibiotics. Another is to see if using two antibiotics for a short time might improve outcomes when people have blood infections. Last, whether we can find new uses for older antibiotics that are no longer widely used but might be very effective for resistant bugs that have become more common in hospitals;2) Hepatitis C. There are now several very well tolerated oral drugs which cure >90% of patients with Hepatitis C with just 12-24 weeks of treatment. However, they are very expensive and not widely available. We are planning a study to see if people can be cured with even shorter treatment courses of between 4-6 weeks. 3) Infections that ‘go global’. The 2009 ‘swine flu’ outbreak, only 6 years after SARS, reminded us of how important it is to prepare for global epidemics. We are part of two international influenza studies trying to understand how influenza changes over time and what factors predict who will do badly if they get flu. We are now trialling a new treatment (FLU-IVIG) for those severely ill, hospitalised with influenza.