Meet The Researcher

Outside of work I like to take my mind off science by doing projects around the house. I’ve been landscaping my front yard and back yards recently. Before this I painted the house and did some roof tiling.

It was probably based on a number of reasons rather than a single reason. I have worked with several people over the years who had MS, or who had family with MS, so I’ve been able to see the impact that MS-related fatigue has on people. Given that my lab has a long history of studying mechanisms of fatigue I felt like it was a research field that I could make a genuine contribution to.

Although it’s not directly related to my own field, I think that linking the Epstein-Barr virus to MS was a very exciting development. There are so many CNS diseases where it is difficult to pinpoint an origin for the disease. Discoveries like this one could open up the door to developing preventative strategies to reduce the incidence of MS in the future.

Our project will use cutting-edge physiology methods to assess fatigue in people with MS. We will examine how the central nervous system is compromised with physical activity, and then delve further into muscle physiology to study metabolic consequences of MS. Our project will not only provide a clear understanding of factors that impair physical activity in people with MS, but our data will also enable us to develop better tools for MS patients to report their fatigue to clinicians.

Our work involves several important end users. Neurologists are critical for the diagnosis and medical treatment of people with MS. So we will work closely with neurologists and medical personnel to understand how they assess and treat fatigue in MS patients. We will also determine if existing clinical measures of fatigue fully capture what the patient is experiencing. This can only be achieved by closely working with people with MS, and finding out if their perceptions of fatigue align with clinical measurements of fatigue.

There is always a new challenge, a new question to answer, a newly published piece of MS research to read. Scientists rarely have time to get bored with their job because each week is different to the last. I think that one of the greatest challenges that exists in Australia is maintaining support for ‘discovery’ research. Not all projects have an immediate outcome for society, but instead take years to fully develop. It’s important to keep supporting discovery research because it will eventually provide a big impact on our health care system.