Antimicrobial optimisation

About

Infections in the healthcare setting are common and cause too many people to die. Severe infections commonly occur in patients with critical illness, burns, transplant, cystic fibrosis and immunosuppression. Infections in these patients are more difficult to treat leading to more multi-drug resistant (‘superbug’) infections which are associated with increased mortality and poorer health outcomes.

The Antimicrobial Optimisation Group is addressing these issues by improving antimicrobial dosing in these challenging special patient populations, using our world leading collaborative experience in the areas of laboratory-based infection and experimental models, clinical pharmacokinetics, pharmacometrics and clinical trials to define robust and evidence-based dosing regimens of our most commonly used antibiotics that will maximise antimicrobial effectiveness including reducing the emergence of resistance.

This group runs the Centre of Research Excellence for Optimising and personalising antimicrobial dosing to reduce resistance (RESPOND).

PhD students

Completed PhD students

  • Dr Eko Setiawan
  • Dr Vesa Cheng
  • Dr Kamrul Islam
  • Dr Gloria Wong
  • Dr Sazlyna Mohd Sazlly Lim
  • Dr Aaron Heffernan
  • Dr Yarmarly Guerra Valero

Critically ill patients often have varying physiological needs to an average patient and often require different dosages of antibiotics and other drugs, particularly if they are on renal replacement therapies. There is also a controversy over whether bolus dosing or continuous infusion of β-lactams is more effective in antibiotic delivery in critically ill patients. Professor Lipman has pioneered work that demonstrates that patients in intensive care are not receiving enough antibiotics to achieve optimal levels to kill pathogens. This in turn leads to poorer health outcomes for patients and antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistant infections commonly occur in long stay, debilitated patients and contribute to increased risk of death, longer ICU and hospital stay, further weakness and long term dysfunction. This problem also contributes to patients being unable to be discharged from ICU or hospital and so exacerbating the shortage of acute hospital beds and increases in surgery waiting time.

If you would like to make a tax deductible donation to antimicrobial optimisation research, please contact med.advancement@uq.edu.au. Thank you for your support.