Brett Lidbury

Brett A. Lidbury, B.Sc, B.Sc (Hons) (Newcastle), PhD (ANU), FFSc (RCPA), is an Associate Professor with the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (Research School of Population Health), College of Health and Medicine at the Australian National University. His areas of expertise are medical virology, innate immunity, and biostatistics. Research interests include improving the efficacy of diagnostic pathology and biomarke r pattern discovery, particularly in relation to ME/CFS and infectious diseases. Earlier research activity was interested in Ross River virus (RRV) pathogenesis, which as an Australian viral suspect in long-term fatigue, lead to current endeavors for chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis. His work is entirely focused on human biology and pathology, without the requirement to develop an animal model.

ME/CFS research
Dr Lidbury and his colleagues are conducting Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) studies that are ongoing with research participants recruited and assessed by CFS Discovery in Melbourne (Donvale, VIC 3111), in collaboration with the Hudson Research Institute, Paranta Biosciences, Bio21 Institute (University of Melbourne), La Trobe University and Universidad del Rosario, Bogota (School of Medicine and Health Sciences). Via these collaborations we are gathering data on potential immune serum markers (see Activin B), mitochondrial function and metabolomics, as well as genetics, with the ANU group applying computational methods, for example machine learning, to interrogate these results as a systems biology investigation. A strength at the ANU is also the assessment of pathology and clinical data to increase diagnostic prediction, while developing rules to simplify decision-making for patient assessment.

The ME/CFS project for the validation of Activin markers is funded by the Judith Jane Mason & Harold Stannett Williams Memorial Foundation, and projects concerning genetic analyses are funded by ME Research UK.

Awards

 * Nominee for 2016 ACT Scientist of the Year
 * Fellowship to the Faculty of Science, The Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia.

Notable studies

 * 2014, Comorbidity of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome in an Australian cohort
 * 2017, Activin B is a novel biomarker for chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) diagnosis: a cross sectional study
 * 2018, Weighting of orthostatic intolerance time measurements with standing difficulty score stratifies ME/CFS symptom severity and analyte detection

Talks & interviews

 * 13 Mar 2019, Rethinking Diagnostic Reference Intervals for ME/CFS via Machine Learning & the Utility of Activin B to Assess Symptom Severity given at the International Research Symposium, Geelong, Australia, sponsored by Emerge Australia

Online presence

 * PubMed
 * Australian National University faculty bio

Learn more

 * 2018, How much can people with ME stand?
 * 2016, Meet the scientists - Dr Brett Lidbury