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Respiratory Environmental Health

The Respiratory Environmental Health team conducts research in early life determinants of lung growth and development, respiratory environmental health, and mechanisms of airway dysfunction in asthma and other respiratory disease.

These research themes underpin the team's overall goal to understand the factors that contribute to respiratory disease, and thus improve the respiratory health of children and their families.

The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) concept describes how maternal and environmental factors interact during development to have long-term consequences on later health and disease. The main focus of DOHaD has been on how early-life nutritional insults manifest as chronic disease in adult life, however there is increasing evidence that in utero and early-life exposure to environmental insults, such as air pollution, tobacco smoke, pathogens and allergens is involved in the early programming of asthma and other respiratory diseases.

This evidence is based on epidemiological studies, but is confounded by the complex inter-related exposures that children experience during development. Because of this complexity, a significant knowledge gap exists around the mechanisms associated between environmental exposures and the development of respiratory disease and dysfunction. By understanding key lung development processes we aim to design interventions that will ultimately prevent the onset of respiratory disease and improve lung health in the community.

Facilitated through collaborations with researchers examining clinical outcomes, the team's approach to research is multi-disciplinary, with epidemiological and clinical studies informing the design of mechanistic pre-clinical studies. These are in turn used to identify issues that require further investigation in terms of clinical outcomes and public health.

Team leader

Head, Respiratory Environmental Health

Team members (4)

Senior Research Officer

Natalie Johnson

Natalie Johnson

PhD Student

Ebony Quintrell

Ebony Quintrell

PhD student

Rachel Ong

Rachel Ong

Honours student

The Safety of Alcohol Pharmacotherapies in Pregnancy: A Scoping Review of Human and Animal Research

Alcohol pharmacotherapies pose unknown teratogenic risks in pregnancy and are therefore recommended to be avoided. This limits treatment options for pregnant individuals with alcohol use disorders (AUD). The information on the safety of these medications during pregnancy is uncertain, prompting a scoping review. The objective of this review was to investigate available information on the safety of alcohol pharmacotherapies in pregnancy.

Exposure to biodiesel exhaust is less harmful than exposure to mineral diesel exhaust on blood-brain barrier integrity in a murine model

Emerging data suggest that air pollution is a persistent source of neuroinflammation, reactive oxygen species, and neuropathology that contributes to central nervous system disorders. Previous research using animal models has shown that exposure to diesel exhaust causes considerable disruption of the blood-brain barrier, leading to marked neuroinflammation. 

Inclusion of genital, sexual, and gender diversity in human reproductive teaching: impact on student experience and recommendations for tertiary educators

Western societal norms have long been constrained by binary and exclusionary perspectives on matters such as infertility, contraception, sexual health, sexuality, and gender. These viewpoints have shaped research and knowledge frameworks for decades and led to an inaccurate and incomplete reproductive biology curriculum. To combat these deficiencies in reproductive systems-related education, our teaching team undertook a gradual transformation of unit content from 2018 to 2023, aiming to better reflect real diversity in human reproductive biology.

Alcohol pharmacotherapy dispensing trends in Australia between 2006 and 2023

This study aimed to investigate acamprosate and naltrexone dispensing patterns in Australia.

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