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Research

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common cause of respiratory tract infections in infants and young children, and adults over 60 years of age. Infants born prematurely, adults aged over 75 years, individuals with medical conditions such as chronic cardiac or respiratory disease, or obesity, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are at increased risk of severe RSV disease. 

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Brain development during the preschool period is complex and extensive and underlies ongoing behavioral and cognitive maturation. Increasing understanding of typical brain maturation during this time is critical to early identification of atypical development and could inform treatments and interventions.

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In Western Australia (WA), children aged 24 months living regionally or remotely (non-urban) have suboptimal vaccine uptake. As there has not yet been a systematic approach to understanding the facilitators and barriers to childhood vaccination in regional and remote WA, this study aimed to understand the views of key immunisation stakeholders regarding barriers and solutions.

Research

As herpes simplex virus in infancy is not a mandatory notifiable condition in Australia, completeness of ascertainment by the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit (APSU) has been difficult to evaluate to date. We evaluated case capture in Queensland and Western Australia using statewide laboratory and clinical data and complementary surveillance data collected via the APSU.

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A problem that applied researchers and practitioners often face is the fact that different institutions within research consortia use different scales to evaluate the same construct which makes comparison of the results and pooling challenging.

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Children prone to irritability experience significant functional impairments and internalising and externalising problems. Contemporary models have sought to elucidate the underlying mechanisms in irritability, such as aberrant threat and reward biases to improve interventions. 

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This paper presents the first causal estimates of the effect of weather on children's time allocation. It exploits exogenous variations in local weather observed during the random diary dates of two nationally representative cohorts of Australian children whose time-use diaries were surveyed biennially over 10 years.

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Social emotional development is imperative to young children's long-term psychological and physical health. Physical activity (PA) may be important for young children's social emotional development. The association between preschooler PA duration and intensity and social emotional development was investigated.

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Interparental conflict (IPC) has the potential to adversely affect children's social, emotional, and behavioural functioning. The overall objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between both the severity and chronicity of IPC across early and middle childhood and children's emotional-behavioural functioning at 10-11 years. Specifically, we aimed to: (1) identify distinct trajectories of IPC spanning 10-11 years since birth of the study child as reported by mothers, and (2) examine the emotional-behavioural functioning of children exposed to the identified IPC trajectories.

Research

Altered maternal haemoglobin levels during pregnancy are associated with pre-clinical and clinical conditions affecting the fetus. Evidence from animal models suggests that these associations may be partially explained by differential DNA methylation in the newborn with possible long-term consequences. To test this in humans, we meta-analyzed the epigenome-wide associations of maternal haemoglobin levels during pregnancy with offspring DNA methylation in 3,967 newborn cord blood and 1,534 children and 1,962 adolescent whole-blood samples derived from 10 cohorts.