Viral Hepatitis: improving lives through medical research - an interactive panel discussion (29th July, free registration)

Dear all,

As part of World Hepatitis Day and in my other role as President of the Australian Centre for Hepatitis Virology, we’re running a free online interactive panel discussion on the 29th of July. It is aimed at the general public and particularly those affected by viral hepatitis.

The topic is how medical research has vastly improved the lives of those living with hepatitis within our lifetimes. We’ve got a wonderful, broadly experienced expert panel (a hepatologist, a few scientists, a pathology lab manager, and an epidemiologist) to discuss and answer crowd questions on the night. I’ll be hosting with Dr. Chaturaka Rodrigo, who is a Hep C researcher.

I hope you can all join.

Free registration here: Viral Hepatitis: improving lives with medical research - a panel discussion Tickets, Thu 29/07/2021 at 6:00 pm | Eventbrite

I also encourage you to submit questions ahead of time here: Slido. I will be asking this to the panel during the event. This is so that you’ll get something out of it even if you are unable to make it due to other commitments or time-zone differences. I’ll try to post a recording of this here afterwards.

Cheers,
Thomas

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Dear all,

This was a fantastic event with lots of interesting discussion and stories about the history of hepatitis viruses. You can catch up here with a recording of the night: https://youtu.be/rVEnz4PtrEY

Thank you to all of our panel and audience, particularly those brave enough to ask their questions.

Much appreciated,
Thomas

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the link. It was very interesting to hear the scientific side and then also the Q&A. I can’t totally keep up with the scientific side but like to listen anyway. The Q&A portion really reinforced how people from all around the world deal with lack of healthcare in underdeveloped countries and how so many deal with discrimination and stigma.

This is beside the point, but I LOVE Australian accents. So it was a treat to listen to so many Australian panelists… lol.

-Paul

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Dear all,

We have recently written up a report on this event and share some lessons we learnt in setting this up. The paper is here (open access) if anyone is interested: Viruses | Free Full-Text | The Inaugural Australian Centre for Hepatitis Virology Public Panel Discussion on Viral Hepatitis Research—Lessons in Scientific Community Outreach

Many thanks to the co-authors and panel members: @Chaturaka, @simone.strasser, @scott.bowden, Jennifer MacLachlan and Prof Heidi Drummer.

Cheers,
Thomas

Hi Thomas
I was reading about this study how this helps hep b an hep c with enhancing T cells for viruses let me know what you think? 9 Things to Know About Thymus Extract

Eating or applying thymus extract to your skin will almost certainly do nothing. These are really bad ways of getting the chemicals to the T-cells. When you eat something, it’s broken down to its component parts and any function that it had would be lost. It’d be like expecting to drive around with a pile of scrap metal.

The skin is also a pretty good barrier for pretty much everything. If you spill ethanol onto yourself, you can pretty much ignore it. If you inject it, you’re pretty much dead.

It’s also important to note that immunology is really really complicated, and it’s not just a matter of making more T-cells. There are so many different kinds of T-cells that do different things (there are some that stop the immune response, others that make it stronger), it almost certainly won’t help with Hep B or C.

Hope this provides some context.

Cheers,
Thomas

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