australia

Trial By Error: Awaiting Response on Chalder Paper; Australian GPs Still Promoting GET and Citing PACE

4 January 2022 by David Tuller

By David Tuller, DrPH

Last month, the journal Occupational Medicine published an innumerate article from Professor Trudie Chalder and several colleagues at Kingâ€™s College London, called “Chronic fatigue syndrome and occupational status: a retrospective longitudinal study.” Professor Brian Hughes, a psychologist at National University of Ireland, Galway, and I alerted the journal of some disqualifying issues with the paper, including the authorsâ€™ jaw-dropping failure to accurately describe their own statistical findings. (They completely mangled the percentages related to the core findings. When I first read the paper, I reviewed the text and tables again and again to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding how badly they’d screwed up.)

Rabbits and viruses: An iconic example of natural selection

21 March 2019 by Vincent Racaniello

When viruses are introduced into a new population, selection pressures can lead to evolution of both pathogen and host. The pathogen must adapt to a new host, while the latter can become resistant to infection, leading to an arms race. An archetypal example of such host-pathogen evolution is illustrated by the attempt to control rabbit populations in Australia by the release of a pathogenic virus. Recent work illuminates the changes that occurred as the rabbits became resistant to infection.

Humpback whale respiratory virome

17 May 2018 by Vincent Racaniello

How difficult would it be to study the virome of living whales? You might think that sampling would be the hard part, but not if you used a drone.

A drone was used to collect the breath (‘blow’) from 19 humpback whales near Sydney, Australia. The video below show how a sampling chamber carried by a drone was used for this process.

RNA was extracted from the collected samples and subjected to high-throughput sequencing. The results revealed a variety of both DNA and RNA virus sequences that can be placed into 42 known virus families, including 29 containing bacteriophages.

The most abundant eukaryotic virus sequences resembled those of Circoviridae, which are small, ubiquitous, single-stranded DNA containing viruses; the Parvoviridae (with linear, ssDNA genomes), and Tombusviridae (plant viruses with single stranded, positive sense RNA genomes). Other minor viruses include new members of the Picornaviridae and Astroviridae, both with plus strand RNA genomes.

It is difficult to know if these viruses actually infect humpback whales, or if they are simply passengers. For this reason, the authors call their sequences whale-associated.

I love the approach to sampling the whale virome using a drone. But eventually we will have to get up close and personal to determine if any of these sequences are from viruses that actually replicate in whales.

TWiV 366: Doctorates down under

6 December 2015 by Vincent Racaniello

On episode #366 of the science show This Week in Virology,Â Vincent visitsÂ Melbourne, Australia, where heÂ speaks with four PhD students about their research projects and what it’s like to get a doctorate down under.

You can find TWiV #366 at www.microbe.tv/twiv. Or you can watch the video below.

TWiV 293: Virology Down Under

17 July 2014 by Vincent Racaniello

On episode #293 of the science show This Week in Virology,Â VincentÂ visits Melbourne, Australia and speaks with Melissa, Alex, Gilda, and Paul about their work on HIV infection of the central nervous system, West Nile virus, microbicides for HIV, and the Koala retrovirus.

You can find TWiV #293 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.

Spread of koala retrovirus in Australia

7 November 2012 by Vincent Racaniello

The Koala retrovirus (KoRV) continues to spread within Australia, according to results of a new analysis of a larger sample size from a wider geographical range than was previously studied.

Blood or tissue samples were collected from koalas in different regions of Australia, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect the presence of KoRV proviral DNA,Â a DNA copy of the retroviral genome integrated into host cell DNA. Most of the koalas from the Australian mainland were positive for KoRV proviral DNA (442/466; 94.8%). All samples from animals in Queensland and New South Wales were KoRV positive. In mainland Victoria 65 of 89 animals contained KoRV DNA (73%). On the Victorian islands prevalence of KoRV ranged from 0% on Philip Island (0/11) to 50% on Snake Island (6/12). On the previously KoRV-free Kangaroo Island (link), 24 of 162 animals (14.8%) were KoRV positive. These results suggest that KoRV initially entered the koala population in the north of Australia and has been slowly spreading to the south. There are also other potential explanations for the results: there may be differences in KoRV susceptibility in northern versus southern animals, and the rate of transmission might differ in the two areas.

The genome of Queensland koalas contain far more copies of KoRV per cell, 165, than animals in Victoria, which ranged from less than one to 1.5 copies per cell. The Queensland koalas are likely fully endogenized – that is, the integrated KoRV DNA is passed from parent to offspring in the germline, and hence every koala cell contains viral DNA. In contrast, in Victoria koalas KoRV has either recently entered the germline (1.5 copies/cell) or has not yet entered this state (<1 copy/cell). In animals with less than one proviral copy per cell, KoRV infection was likely acquired exogenously from one animal to another. The mode of transmission of KoRV among koalas is not known, but might involve animal-animal contact or arthropod transmission.

It seems likely that eventually all wild koalas will be endogenized by KoRV. Whether this process will impact the long-term survival of the species is not known, especially since the disease caused by KoRV infection is poorly understood.

GS Simmons, PR Young, JJ Hanger, K Jones, D Clarke, JJ McKeed, J Meersa. 2012. Prevalence of koala retrovirus in geographically diverse populations in Australia. Austr. Vet. J.Â 90(10):404-9.