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SOME €13.5 MILLION is going to be spent on medical research projects in Ireland over the next five years, Health Minsiter Leo Varadkar announced today.
A total of 36 projects will be funded by the Health Research Board (HRB), covering areas such as cancer, HIV and pneumonia.
Professor Neil Rowan will head up a team of scientists at Athlone Institute of Technology and NUI Galway who are looking into how a combination of stem cells and a component of magic mushrooms, Beta-1-6-D-glucans, could be used to help pneumonia patients.
The researchers hope that the study could lead to an alternative to antibiotics.
Pneumonia accounts for 5% of deaths in Ireland. It is the most common cause of acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome where there is currently no specific therapy.
“This will hopefully impact on patient care by offering a new therapeutic intervention, something that doesn’t exist at this moment in time,” Rowan said.
The successful research projects were selected from a long-list of 190 applications. Thirty two of them will receive funding of up to €330,000 and must be completed in three years, while four will receive up to €800,000 and will be completed within five years.
The research teams are spread across Ireland, with researchers linked to TCD, UCD, NUI Galway, UCC, RCSI, Athlone Institute of Technology, Maynooth University and University of Limerick.
Dr Patrick Mallon is leading a team in UCD that will be researching how to limit bone loss in HIV patients on anti-retroviral drugs.
As people with HIV now live into old age because of the success of anti-retroviral therapy (ART), long-term effects of HIV and its treatment, such as osteoporosis, are becoming major issues.
The group will conduct a clinical trial on 80 people with HIV who are about to start ART. Participants will either receive a short course of alendronate or a placebo taken weekly for 14 weeks. The study will determine the loss of bone density over the first year of ART between the two treatment groups.
Meanwhile, Dr Juliette Hussey from Trinity College will be assessing the effect of diet and exercise in helping patients who are recovering from surgery for oesophageal cancer, the sixth most common cancer in Ireland.
Hussey noted that there is currently a low survival rate for people with this form of the disease, but said this is improving.
The Government might well be keeping a close eye on one of the projects in particular. Dr Steve Thomas from TCD will be looking into what Ireland needs to do to successfully implement universal health care.
Varadkar announced the funding at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in Dublin today.
He said that the investment highlighted “the Government’s commitment to developing new research in areas with a clear health benefit, as well as developing new approaches to health care, and boosting the medical science sector”.
Every treatment, every medical device and every procedure in our health service starts with a good idea that has been proved in practice.
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How about people not leave beaches strewn with half eaten sandwiches and other rubbish for seagulls to feast on. No wonder they think they can get handy grub from people.
This is it. They’re as smart as a dog an as easily domesticated by free food.
it wouldn’t take a genius to feed them properly for filling a bin.
Maybe if idiots put there food in a bin ..The poor birds wouldn’t bother them.
I’ve tackled a few aggressive birds in my time.
Horrible little shits are really coming alive the last week or two. The young grey ones with their whistly screech are awful, we are often woken by the tap tap of one pecking on our skylight. Very tempting to get some kind of air rifle at them
What they need to do is introduce Anti-Seagull Behaviour Orders, or ASBOs for short.
Shoot the feckers, there’s way too many of them anyway.
No there is not too many. Populations declining & actually threatened in Ireland
get yourself to howth on a sunny day my man!
Ah but are the thousands of littering Irish not the problem? Instead of the evolved scavenger doing what it evolved to do?
Birds of prey are declining rapidly, but seagulls? Come on, seriously, wake up. They’re everywhere.
This is from UK but relevant here. Simple fact is gulls populations are in serious decline with herring & great black baxked gulls both red listed. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/9533420/Seagulls-invade-cities-because-of-collapse-of-fishing-and-rise-in-recycling-food.html
all the natural predators of seagulls are gone now thanks to us. look at what happened to the passenger pigeon in the states or myxomatosis with rabbits. when you mess with mother nature it has repercussions.
The COMMON GULL no such thing as a Seagull (although the term is commonly used so it may as well be accepted and only needs to be officially acknowledged, which would save so much grief but I digress) anyway, the gull do have a natural predator and it’s US, but in the UK they are a protected species (I don’t know about here), I think it was because people were eating them to extinction and their eggs make great custard (em allegedly). So it is a problem of their own making……. no pity whatsoever.
America is the natural predator of the COMMON GULL??
I saw a documentary on this in the 60s, think it was called the birds, it didn’t end well, we must round up the trouble makers at once and send them to Greece, as an additional punitive clause in the bailout package.
ALL the sand eels and mackerel sprat are no more due to the pollution of our seas , I noticed that all the seaweed on the east coast is black from pollution. The gulls are starving and taking it out on us dirty humans.
Cull the flying rats!
Prefer a seagull shitting on me from above and robbing the food from my kids hands than this Cameron chap
Too many Seagulls, and not enough recipes
They’ll probably fight them on the beaches…
250000 to research seagulls! What will it possibly tell you that common sense doesn’t.
Some are cheeky, shoot them.
Not all seagulls are cheeky. Some are intelligent and friendly.
http://jrnl.ie/2221490
Rule Brittania
It’d be a real quandary for the posters here if this site had a poll: Who would you like to see die more, seagulls or people floating in rafts in the Mediterranean?
David Cameron best friend is Senator Ted O Sullivan as seagulls have lost the run of themselves
Gay marriage and now this !!
We should all just pitch fork it up. Grab your torches people were going gill hunting.
Really. seagulls are getting out of hand! Really!
There were seagulls in Yorkshire??? Has Yorkshire a coastline??
yes.
Sorry!!! I was thinking of West Yorkshire wedged between Cumbria and North Yorkshire!! Yorkshire is like Tipperary with the different Ridings!! Stunning coastline I might add!!
No part of West Yorkshire is anywhere near Cumbria.
I think you might find the South eastern section of Cumbria is within the Yorkshire Dales National park and borders Yorkshire!! :)
pigeons are the real problem, horrible birds
You wank them seagulls
angry birds
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