For a number of years, University of Tasmania researcher Stephen Tristram had been investigating antibiotic resistance in the organism Haemophilus Influenzae. This organism is an important cause of respiratory infections, for which significant amounts of antibiotics are prescribed in Australia.
Stephen’s previous work had concentrated on using special techniques to predict how the organism might mutate to become resistant to some of the newer types of antibiotics that are currently important in treating these infections. He also devised laboratory based tests that would hopefully be able to detect this new type of antibiotic resistance if it were to emerge naturally.
Soon after this initial work was published, there was a report of an organism isolated in a patient in South Africa that appeared to have the type of antibiotic resistance that he had predicted.
This research project involved acquiring the strains and characterising the resistance mechanisms.
The strains were found to not only have the mechanism of resistance predicted in his initial work and be easily detected using the laboratory tests devised in that work, but also had additional resistance mechanisms not previously detected in this organism. This last new finding is significant because it raised the possibility that Haemophilus Influenzae, which is a common organism found in the respiratory tract of most people, might be the source of the genes that subsequently transfer antibiotic resistance to Haemophilus Influenzae which is a significant cause of human disease.
Tasmania's Clifford Craig Medical Research Trust was established in 1991.