University of Otago

Current state and future directions of the discipline of rural medicine in Aotearoa New Zealand: a qualitative study

Introduction Rural medicine is shaped by geographic distance from resources and specialist care, requiring broad generalist practice. International evidence supports rural-targeted postgraduate training, clinical–academic integration, and a dedicated evidence base. Progress in Ao...

Antarctic sea ice response to meltwater due to Antarctic ice sheet mass loss in a multi-model ensemble

Abstract. We present the first multi-model study of the Antarctic sea ice response to enhanced meltwater due to dynamic mass loss from the Antarctic ice sheet. This meltwater flux (and its future increase under global warming) is not included in the most recent state-of-the-art c...

Tree Rearrangement Graphs Admit Paths of Decreasing Robinson-Foulds Distance

Tree rearrangements such as Nearest Neighbor Interchange (NNI) and Subtree Prune and Regraft (SPR) are commonly used to explore phylogenetic treespace. Computing distances based on them, however, is often intractable, so the efficiently computable Robinson-Foulds (RF) distance is...

Magnetization Dynamics-Modulated Near-Infrared Mie Scattering Enables Homogeneous Femtomolar Immunosensing for Whole Blood

Abstract Low-abundance biomarkers in whole blood hold immense clinical value for disease diagnosis. However, their detection remains constrained by the difficulty of conventional assays in simultaneously achieving high sensitivity, rapid turnaround, and operational simplicity. He...

Do Children Who Develop Faster Go on to Age Faster in Midlife?

We quantified the association between rate of child development and pace of midlife aging in the Dunedin Study and the Add Health Study. Physical development was quantified in Dunedin participants ( N = 1,037; age 45) using a composite comprised of (1) birth weight for gestationa...

Ant brain metabolomics reveals contrasting purine and amine dynamics in a reversible trematode-induced host manipulation

Abstract The neurochemical mechanisms underlying parasite-induced host manipulations remain poorly understood. Formicid ants infected with lancet fluke, Dicrocoelium dendriticum, attach to vegetation with their mandibles during cool conditions, facilitating ingestion by grazing m...

Economic Burden of Herpes Zoster Ophthalmicus in New Zealand: A Retrospective Cohort Cost Analysis

Purpose: The aim of this study was to estimate the direct health care cost burden of herpes zoster ophthalmicus (HZO) in New Zealand and to evaluate potential implications for shingles vaccination policy. Methods: This retrospective cohort study analyzed 869 participants with HZO...

‘Stuck in a Time Warp’ or ‘Going Forward With Care’? Traversing the Environmental Politics of Genetic Modification in Aotearoa New Zealand

This article offers an environmental politics history of genetic modification (GM) in Aotearoa New Zealand. GM has been on political agendas for half a century. It has again come to the fore with proposals to enable the technology after decades of stringent regulations. To better...

Epigenome-Wide Association Study of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Identifies Central Role for Inflammatory Pathways

BACKGROUND: Epigenetic mechanisms underlying susceptibility to abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) remain poorly understood. Identifying causal DNA methylation markers for AAA can elucidate the regulatory processes that drive aneurysm formation and accelerate translational applicatio...

Associations Between Wake‐Time and Sleep‐Time Masticatory Muscle Activity and Clinical Correlates in Free‐Living Adults

ABSTRACT Aim To investigate associations between wake‐time and sleep‐time masticatory muscle activity (MMA) in free‐living adults with high levels of oral behaviours, and to examine associations with tooth wear, masticatory muscle pain, stress, and anxiety. Methods In this observ...

Targeting chondroitin synthase 1 attenuates hyperplastic arterial remodeling via gene therapy

Chondroitin sulfate glycosaminoglycans accumulate excessively in the extracellular matrix during pathological remodeling and exacerbate cardiovascular deterioration. Here we show that chondroitin synthase 1 (CHSY1) is the primary enzyme responsible for chondroitin sulfate synthes...

Process transparency in research publication

In (tourism) scholarship, the published article is often presented as a monolithic, static output, obscuring the iterative and often messy reality of manuscript evolution. Furthermore, current editorial metadata sustains an ‘illusion of finality’, sanitising the intellectual fric...

Spatial access to CT scanners: a rural–urban comparison in the Southern and Te Manawa Taki regions of New Zealand

Introduction Computed tomography (CT) is available to few rural communities in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). Obtaining CT imaging is a common reason rural patients are transferred to urban hospitals. Aim This study aimed to quantify rural–urban differences in spatial access to CT in...

Comparison of CRISPR-Cas-Based Knockdown of Endogenous mRNA in Sensory Neurons

Ribonucleic acid (RNA)-targeting clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-CRISPR-associated (CRISPR-Cas) systems enable modulation of gene expression without permanent genome modification, making them useful for sensitive cell types such as neurons. While CRISPR-...

Beyond Neuroretinitis: A Multi-Centre Study of Bartonella-Associated Uveitis

Purpose To characterise the spectrum of clinical presentations of Bartonella-associated uveitis across multiple tertiary uveitis centres and assess the frequency of non-neuroretinitis phenotypes.Methods Multi-centre retrospective case series of patients with serologically confirm...

Developing and validating a learning design framework to support inquiry in under-resourced science classes

This study aimed to examine how design strategies used by science communicators in informal learning environments (ILEs) could be adapted to develop a framework that supports scientific inquiry in under-resourced science classes. Using the analytic induction research strategy, a...

Clonal Hematopoiesis of Indeterminate Potential Proteomic Risk Score for Predicting Clinical Outcome in Patients With Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction

BACKGROUND: Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) is common in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). However, the proteomic signatures linked to CHIP driver mutations and their prognostic implications in HFpEF remain poorly defined. We aimed to...

Patient‐reported outcomes after open and robotic radical prostatectomy: a New Zealand registry study

Objectives Our objective was to compare functional outcomes between open radical prostatectomy (ORP) and robotic‐assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP) in New Zealand. Methods We analysed responses from men in the Prostate Cancer Outcome Registry of New Zealand (PCOR‐NZ) who...

Does light and short-term high food availability enhance larval success in the coral eating crown-of-thorns seastar (Acanthaster cf. solaris)?

Abstract Understanding the environmental drivers of Crown-of-thorns seastar outbreaks is important for predicting and managing coral reef decline. Larval survival and development are strongly influenced by phytoplankton food availability, which is highly variable in space and tim...

The burden of anger among antipodean cyclists: What situations contribute the most to cycling anger?

Despite the numerous benefits of cycling, participation in Australia and New Zealand is not increasing proportional to population growth. Anger among cyclists contributes to both unsafe behaviour on the road and reduced cycling participation. Although the Cycling Anger Scale (CAS...