Clinical toxicology and pharmacology

Our scope includes acute and chronic medicine and chemical poisoning, serious adverse prescribed and non-prescribed drug reactions, and toxicology that create a substantial source of morbidity and mortality across the world.

 

The team has established large prospective cohorts of acute poisoning, and developed treatment guidelines resulting in national and international policy and regulatory changes.

 

Much of our national research is based on detecting early signals of significant drug toxicity and measuring the public health impact of regulatory change.

 

We have led the development of the NSW Poisons Information Centre research program and used data to describe many developing trends in poisoning including pharmaceuticals and drug use.

 

We have been funded by NHMRC Program and CRE Grants (CRE in Medicines and Ageing, and CRE in Translational Venom and Antivenom Research) along with Project grants and other forms of support.

 

 

Recent research projects

• The Australian Toxicology Monitoring (ATOM) and Australian Snakebite Projects (ASP), which identify the clinical effect and response to treatment from various poisonings and snakebites. These have both resulted in changes to national therapeutic guidelines.

• An evaluation of increasing patterns of use and poisoning with various substances such as codeine, paracetamol and pregabalin – these three resulting in media interest and changes to medicines scheduling in 2019-20.

• A randomised stepped wedge trial of scaling up of a community-based alcohol education program in rural Sri Lankan villages, and its effects on alcohol use, associated harms, depression and social capital.

• Building public health research with a national poisoning dataset – funded by an Australian Research Data Commons: Australian Data Partnerships grant (2021-23)​