Not to be sneezed at: Wellcome Trust funds new centre for respiratory infection
2 June 2008
The Centre will bring together more than 200 scientists to work on issues such as how common cold viruses cause disease and affect long-term health, how to make better vaccines to prevent lung infections, and how to diagnose TB more accurately.
Professor Peter Openshaw, Director of the Centre, argues that research into respiratory infections is an urgent priority.
"Respiratory disease has never been as well funded as it deserves to be, considering the impact it has on health," he says. "Respiratory infections are at the root of many of the diseases that we treat every day."
The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which causes colds in adults, is the main single cause of hospitalisation in babies under twelve months old. It causes most cases of viral bronchiolitis, an infection of the small airways of the lung that leads to breathing problems and which results in about 1 in every 40 babies affected being admitted to hospital. Around 40 per cent of infants who experience bronchiolitis as a result of RSV infection are affected by recurring wheezing and asthma in childhood.
The researchers will investigate why some babies get severe diseases, while the majority recover with ease. Imperial College researchers have already made many important discoveries about RSV, including a study in 2004 that revealed that RSV can 'hit and hide', surviving in the body for many months or years. They are now investigating whether recurrent wheezing in children could be caused by the virus hiding in the lung.
The centre will also be ready to react in the event of a new influenza pandemic occurring, for example if the H5N1 avian influenza virus develops the ability to transmit from human to human effectively. Researchers from the centre will develop and implement plans in advance to enable rapid analysis of the particular strain and to identify effective therapies in the event of any outbreak.
"We can only move fast to bring an epidemic under control if we have staff ready and plans already in place," explains Professor Openshaw. "To plan at the stage when patients start coming in through casualty will be impossible."
