Dr Stephen Aston

Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Fellow

Areas of interest

Management of pneumonia in low-resource settings; respiratory infection in HIV-infected adults

Background 

Stephen completed undergraduate and core medical training in Birmingham. Having spent a year in Oxford working on phase 1 clinical vaccine trials he took up a clinical research fellow position at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and was initially involved in large collaborative project investigating the pathophysiology of severe pandemic influenza. He started specialist registrar training in infectious diseases and general internal medicine in 2010 and in 2012 secured a Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Training Fellowship to study pneumonia in Malawian adults.

Research

His mains research interests are the diagnosis and management of severe respiratory tract infection in low-resource settings, particularly in HIV-infected adults. In his current PhD project he is recruiting a large prospective cohort of adults hospitalised with pneumonia in Malawi with the aim of identifying factors predictive of adverse outcome that may then inform patient triage and early management strategies.

Students

Dr Sarah Heath (MSc Tropical Medicine): Identification of radiographic features associated with poor prognosis in adults with pneumonia in an area of high HIV prevalence.

Recent publications: 

    Selected publications

    • Selected Publications

      Aston SJ. The role of rapid diagnostic tests in managing adults with pneumonia in low-resource settings. Pneumonia2014;5:8-17.

      Zar HJ, Madhi SA, Aston SJ, Gordon SB. Pneumonia in low and middle income countries: progress and challenges.Thorax 2013;68:1052-6

      Aston SJ. A clinicians guide to 2009 H1N1 influenza. African Journal of Respiratory Medicine 2010;5:8-11.

      Wootton DG, Aston SJ, Gordon SB. The pathophysiology of pneumococcal pneumonia. In: Chalmers JD, Aliberti S, Pletz M (Eds). European Respiratory Society Monograph: Community Acquired Pneumonia. European Respiratory Society, Sheffield, 2014: pp 42-63.

      Aston SJ, Davies G, Beeching NJ. Mycobacterial infection. In:Davey P, Sprigings D (Eds). Oxford Diagnosis and Treatment in Internal Medicine. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014. In press