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Eradicating deadly staph using a new breed of antibiotics has revealed promising results in research released by QUT, helping to overcome one of the biggest modern medical challenges.

It's time to stop the endemic financial entanglement with industry that is distorting the production and use of healthcare evidence, causing harm to individuals and waste for health systems, argue an influential group of Australian and international experts in The BMJ. Too many tests, diagnoses, pills and procedures are wasting resources that could be better spent meeting genuine need. 

Queensland researchers from QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute have shown that 22 different genes help to determine how much sun exposure a person needs to receive before developing melanoma. For people at high genetic risk, sun exposure in childhood is a strong contributing factor while people at low genetic risk develop melanoma only after a lifetime of exposure to sunlight.

Blood glucose and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) screening alone does not improve diabetes case detection and care for patients admitted to hospital from emergency departments (EDs), according to research published this month by the Medical Journal of Australia.

Treatment for children with acute gastroenteritis follows clinical practice guidelines 90% of the time but drops to around 50% adherence for best practice diagnosis and ongoing management of the condition, according to new Australian research.

If you asked people what actually happens when they turn on the lights, get in a lift, or take a photo with their phone, most of them wouldn’t know (or care) about how they work - just as long as it gives you what you need, and it works every time. CKN isn’t all that different. Boil it down and it’s just a work tool that gives you access to clinical information. 

How that information gets there; what’s being done to keep it current and relevant; where the money comes from to pay for it; and who manages the back-end, are all things that the average Queensland Health employee doesn’t need to know about to actually use it. 

Addressing the social determinants of health is ultimately needed for skin infection rates in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to be similar to their non-Aboriginal peers, according to the authors of a narrative review published in the MJA.

For more than 60,000 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families have lived and birthed on the country of their ancestors. In the last decade in Australia, much discussion has taken place nationally on reclaiming Birthing on Country for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. In a special edition of Women and Birth, the journal of the Australian College of Midwives, nine papers provide a snapshot of some of the innovative work that is changing the experiences for Indigenous Australian families.

A world-first trial by researchers at Monash University could change how oxygen is administered to millions of people in intensive care units across the world. The trial found ICU patients are being given unnecessary levels of oxygen that make no difference to their recovery, and in some specific groups less oxygen may actually improve recovery and survival rates.

Transferring extremely premature babies from non-tertiary neonatal care unit to a tertiary level unit in the first 48 hours after birth is associated with an increased risk of severe brain injury, finds a study published in The BMJ.