Nutrition & Dietetics research

The Nutrition department provides acute and chronic disease management services across a range of clinical areas. We study the impact of disease and the outcome of disease treatment on nutritional status, body composition and energy expenditure to guide nutritional assessment and management practices. 

Current areas of research include the critically ill, respiratory medicine such as cystic fibrosis (CF), stem cell transplant and surgical oncology.

We also investigate novel dietary interventions for disease, such as looking at the effect of the Mediterranean diet on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease led by Dr Audrey Tierney and PhD student Elena Papamiltiadous.

Achievements

  • Madeleine Neff won the 2015 Henrietta Law Memorial Prize for Allied Health for her poster presentation on ethnicity and gestational diabetes at Alfred Health Week.
  • Dr Susannah King, Sarah Fagan, Emily Dynon, Associate Professor Ibolya Nyulasi, together with haematologist Dr Sharon Avery were awarded an Australasian Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition grant to research energy expenditure and body composition in SCT in 2016. 

Postgraduate students

4 PhD students
2 Masters students

Nutrition in the ICU

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Pregnancy and nutrition

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Nutrition in respiratory conditions

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Nutrition and stem cell transplantation

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Impact of surgery for gastric carcinoma

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Our partners

Publications

Myosteatosis predicts higher complications and reduced overall survival following radical oesophageal and gastric cancer surgery

Murnane LC, Forsyth AK, Koukounaras J, Pilgrim CH, Shaw K, Brown WA, Mourtzakis M, Tierney AC, Burton PR

(2021), European Journal of Surgical Oncology, 47(9), 2295-303

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejso.2021.02.008

How does muscularity assessed by bedside methods compare to computed tomography muscle area at intensive care unit admission? A pilot prospective cross-sectional study

Lambell KJ, Earthman CP, Tierney AC, Goh GS, Forsyth A, King SJ

(2021), J Hum Nutr Diet, 34(2), 345-55

DOI: 10.1111/jhn.12804

Low muscularity increases the risk for post-operative pneumonia and delays recovery from complications after oesophago-gastric cancer resection

Murnane LC, Forsyth AK, Koukounaras J, Pilgrim CH, Shaw K, Brown WA, Mourtzakis M, Tierney AC, Burton PR

(2021), ANZ J Surg, 91(12), 2683-9

DOI: 10.1111/ans.17203

View all publications for Nutrition & Dietetics research