The Rounds Updates in health care

Haines introduces Greeny Compostable Underpad

Haines Medical Australia has designed and developed Greeny Compostable Underpad, an environmentally friendlier alternative to the traditional ‘bluey’ underpad — an essential, high-volume healthcare consumable.

Each year, around 75 million bluey underpads are discarded, contributing up to 1950 tonnes of plastic waste to landfill. Haines product development specialists were determined to find a solution.

Greeny is a certified, compostable underpad which is packed in recyclable packaging.

“From the launch of our first compostable kidney dish, it was clear that healthcare workers, at all levels, care deeply about the industry’s environmental impact. For most, it’s not just about meeting environmental KPIs, it’s about caring enough to make a better choice, if and where one is available,” said Laura de Lacy, National Product Manager, Haines Medical Australia.

Early adopters of the product were drawn to its environmental friendliness but have noted potential increases to both hospital efficiencies and patient comfort.

“We appreciate this will challenge the industry as there are often barriers to better environmental options. We look forward to working with the healthcare sector on these barriers and forging ahead with the development of more sustainable products, to help reduce avoidable medical waste,” de Lacy said

New rapid water test could reduce gastro outbreaks

La Trobe University researchers have developed a 30-minute test to identify sewage in recreational and environmental waterways, potentially reducing outbreaks of gastroenteritis and other illnesses in Australia and around the world.

The research, published in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology, shows the loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) test — a rapid DNA amplification technique — can be implemented onsite using a portable diagnostic machine, making identification faster and more cost-effective than current methods.

Study lead and PhD candidate Meysam Khodaparast said that when recreational water is contaminated with human faecal matter, rapid and cost-efficient identification is critical in preventing waterborne pathogen outbreaks. “Current tests require cold chain transportation to get the sample from the site to the lab, taking several days — which prevents rapid action by water authorities and timely public health decisions.

“The LAMP test is as simple as [a] rapid antigen test for water — it’s fast and doesn’t require scientific expertise to achieve an accurate result,” Khodaparast said.

Ten infants have been cured of a rare genetic disease called Artemis-deficient severe combined immunodeficiency (ART-SCID), according to research by scientists in the US and Canada.

The study was published by M.J. Cowan et al. in The New England Journal of Medicine ART-SCID affects approximately one in 65,000 newborns and causes life-threatening problems with the immune system. It’s caused by faulty copies of a gene that codes for a DNA repair enzyme called Artemis, which is required for the production of functioning immune cells.

The infants were conditioned with an intravenous low-dose of the cancer drug Busulfan before the team injected them with gene-corrected cells. These were obtained through bone marrow harvest and transduced with a lentiviral vector.

No unexpected adverse events were reported in safety assessments up to 42 days after transfusion.

Busulfan toxicity manifested as transient cytopenias: Anemia, Thrombocytopenia and Neutropenia. Four patients developed Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia between 4 and 11 months after the transfusion, but this was resolved with reconstitution of T-cell immunity. On follow-up, all the infants had genetically corrected and functional immune cells.

In Australia, contamination of environmental waterways with human faecal matter is a frequent occurrence. The sewer network is separated from the stormwater network; however, during storm events it is very common for stormwater to enter sewer pipes due to broken pipes or illegal connections. Sewerage systems can then reach capacity, releasing sewage back through private plumbing connections, like toilets, or spilling into rivers and creeks. This can lead to millions of litres of sewage ending up in the city’s waterways, killing aquatic wildlife and substantially increasing human health risks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the consumption of faecalcontaminated water causes 485,000 diarrhoeal deaths globally each year.

Commercial partners Bio2Lab and Geneworks supported development of the LAMP test through an industry-based PhD scholarship at La Trobe University, supervised by Professor Travis Beddoe.