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The NSW Government will provide record funding for palliative care across NSW to support people suffering terminal illness and their families.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Treasurer Dominic Perrottet and Minister for Health Brad Hazzard said the upcoming NSW Budget will invest an additional $100 million in palliative care services over the next four years.

“From additional nurses in frontline palliative care to funding for 24-hour community care services, this is a package of funding that will have a powerful and tangible impact across the State,” Ms Berejiklian said.

“At a time in people’s lives where every moment is incredibly precious, this investment is about providing the care options to lessen the strain on them and their loved ones.”

Palliative care aims to improve the quality of life of patients with an active, progressive disease that has little or no prospect of a cure.

Mr Perrottet said: “I am incredibly proud that this Budget includes the most serious commitment of any government in NSW history to give people at the end of life’s journey, and their families, the peace, comfort and support they deserve.

“We have an obligation to honour the dignity of everyone in our community to the very end, and this funding demonstrates our Government’s commitment to meeting that obligation.”

Mr Hazzard said the initiative includes a range of professional training measures.

“This package includes training for 300 nurses and allied health staff, 300 scholarships for rural and regional staff to enhance palliative care skills and 30 additional nurses in hospitals, homes and nursing homes,” Mr Hazzard said.

“We have listened to communities at palliative care roundtables across the state and the message from Broken Hill to Sydney, from Griffith to Lismore is that we need to expand our palliative care resources and choices at a local level.”

“We want the community to have confidence and choice in their end-of-life care and this Budget is a giant leap towards that outcome.”

The 2017-18 State Budget includes funding for:

The Australian Government will provide a life-saving treatment to Australian patients who have a rare medical condition known as Morquio A Syndrome, at no cost.

Vimizim® (elosulfase alfa) will be available under the Life Saving Drugs Program from 1 August.

With treatment costing around $400,000 each year, many Australian children suffering from Morquio A have been unable to receive treatment as it has simply been out-of-reach. 

It’s an awful disease that cruelly affects children. Having access to Vimizim will be life-changing and indeed life-saving for some of our youngest Australians.

Morquio A Syndrome, or mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) type IV A is an inherited metabolic condition, with Vimizim the only available treatment. 

People born with the syndrome are either missing, or don’t have enough of, a crucial enzyme needed to break down long chains of sugar molecules. As a result they have abnormal development and a possible early death.

Before accessing this new drug, patients will need to undergo a clinical assessment and then yearly checks to ensure Vimizim treatment continues to be effective and appropriate for their condition. 

Adding medicines to the Life Saving Drugs Program is rare and Vimizin is only the 13th medicine to be added. 

It will cost of $44 million over five years to treat 20 children. We are able to make this life-changing listing today because of our responsible financial management of the cost of medicines. 

Since coming into Government, we have added over 1400 new and amended drug listings to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to improve the health of Australians. 

Unlike Labor, we are adding medicines recommended by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee without fear or favour. Labor delayed the listing of seven vital drugs.

Australia’s PBS is one of the foundations of our universal health care system and is the envy of many countries.

The Turnbull Government has a rock solid commitment to Medicare and part of this commitment is ensuring people have access to medicine when they need it. 

For further information go to the Life Saving Drugs Program website. 

The approach, jointly developed with Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute scientists, combines -- for the first time -- molecules that inhibit three proteins which in turn repress muscle growth.

Published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists found that inhibiting activin A, activin B and myostatin resulted in skeletal muscle mass increase by as much as 150 per cent in preclinical models.

Myostatin has long been recognised as the body's major negative regulator of skeletal muscle mass, helping to maintain muscle homeostasis in the body, but creating molecules to target all three related proteins together was a novel approach.

"As a result of the study we can now more precisely regulate -- and increase -- muscle mass in the setting of disease," co-lead author from Monash BDI, Dr Craig Harrison, said.

Dr Harrison said the study, the culmination of many years of research with the Baker Institute's Dr Paul Gregorevic, was aimed mostly at developing a way of preventing muscle loss in the wasting condition cachexia, in cancer.

Dr Harrison said cachexia, observed in the end stages of cancer, was thought to contribute or directly cause 20 to 30 per cent of all cancer-related deaths. Palliative care is currently the only treatment for cancer cachexia. The condition is also seen in other diseases including diabetes, AIDS, and in heart and kidney failure.

The paper showed that the combination treatment could prevent muscle wasting in a cancer cachexia model as well as in muscular dystrophy. It could also potentially be used after clinical development in healthy and in ageing individuals undergoing a slow wasting of muscles, Dr Harrison said.

Activins and myostatin belong to the transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) family of proteins, which both researchers have been investigating for a number of years.

Further pre-clinical research is proceeding.

The findings were recently corroborated by a similar study by US scientists, although those experiments did not target activin B and did not demonstrate as great an effect, Dr Harrison said.

The research was supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

Justin L. Chen, Kelly L. Walton, Adam Hagg, Timothy D. Colgan, Katharine Johnson, Hongwei Qian, Paul Gregorevic, Craig A. Harrison. Specific targeting of TGF-β family ligands demonstrates distinct roles in the regulation of muscle mass in health and disease. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017; 201620013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1620013114

The number of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) cases is rising globally. But a newly discovered natural antibiotic -- produced by bacteria from the lung infection in a cystic fibrosis patient -- could help fight these infections. Lab testing reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society shows that the compound is active against multi-drug resistant strains.

Starting with the famous first discovery of penicillin from mold, scientists have continued to search for natural sources of antibiotics. And as pathogens develop resistance to once-reliable medicines, the search has taken on a new urgency. By 2040, more than a third of all TB cases in Russia, for example, could show resistance to first-line drugs currently used to fight the disease, a recent report published in Lancet estimates. 

Among potential new drug sources are species of the bacterial genus Burkholderia that thrive in a wide range of habitats, from soil to the human lung. One way these microbes have adapted to these diverse environments is by making potent antibiotics to take out their competition. In light of the growing threat of drug-resistant bacteria, particularly among TB strains, Gregory L. Challis, Eshwar Mahenthiralingam and colleagues wanted to see if Burkholderia might produce a promising anti-TB compound.

The researchers discovered that one species, Burkholderia gladioli, which was isolated from the sputum of a child with cystic fibrosis, produces an antibiotic called gladiolin. The compound belongs to the same structural class as etnangien, another antibiotic that has been investigated for its ability to jam bacterial cell machinery. But etnangien is highly unstable. The researchers found that gladiolin is much more stable than etnangien, and could therefore potentially be a better drug candidate. Lab testing also showed that gladiolin blocked the growth of four drug-resistant TB strains.

Lijiang Song, Matthew Jenner, Joleen Masschelein, Cerith Jones, Matthew J. Bull, Simon R. Harris, Ruben C. Hartkoorn, Anthony Vocat, Isolda Romero-Canelon, Paul Coupland, Gordon Webster, Matthew Dunn, Rebecca Weiser, Christopher Paisey, Stewart T. Cole, Julian Parkhill, Eshwar Mahenthiralingam, Gregory L. Challis. Discovery and Biosynthesis of Gladiolin: A Burkholderia gladioli Antibiotic with Promising Activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2017; 139 (23): 7974 DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b03382 

For celiac patients and others on gluten-free diets, it seems like gluten is everywhere -- cakes, cookies and breads. It's even in most beers. But now, one team reports in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that beers made with Witkop teff grains may be a good alternative to traditionally brewed barley beers.

Gluten based sensitivities impact millions of people each year, leading to a dramatic rise in gluten-free food products on grocery store shelves. According to the Celiac Disease Foundation, one percent of the global population has celiac disease, which results in the immune system attacking the small intestine when gluten is consumed. Currently, no medicinal treatments are available, and the only option is to follow a strict, gluten-free diet. As a result, breweries have been exploring alternative grains, such as corn, rice and buckwheat, to replace barley in the malting and brewing process. Teff, a small cereal native to Ethiopia that doesn't contain gluten, is another possibility that researchers have tested. Now, Valeria Sileoni and colleagues wanted to examine, for the first time, the potential of a variety of teff called Witkop as a raw material for malting and brewing.

The researchers examined the Witkop teff malting process, in which grains are steeped, germinated and dried, to determine the optimum conditions. Witkop teff took longer to malt than barley, and the team found that the teff had different enzymes to break down sugars than barley. The researchers concluded that Witkop teff grains have potential as a raw material for beer production but would likely require custom malting equipment on an industrial scale.

Lidia Di Ghionno, Ombretta Marconi, Eung Gwan Lee, Christopher J. Rice, Valeria Sileoni, Giuseppe Perretti. Gluten-Free Sources of Fermentable Extract: Effect of Temperature and Germination Time on Quality Attributes of Teff [Eragrostis tef (zucc.) Trotter] Malt and Wort. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2017; 65 (23): 4777 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.7b01717