Professor Paul Turner

Contact information

Podcast Interview

Infectious diseases are prevalent in Cambodia, a country that is struggling with poor infrastructure. Streptococcus pneumoniae causes the most severe form of pneumonia and is now targeted by the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. Dr Paul Turner is studying the effect of this vaccine in field conditions in SE Asia, as well as other direct applications such as the evaluation of a new diagnostic test for Typhoid and interventions to reduce the burden of infections acquired within hospitals.

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Research groups

Paul Turner

MB BS, PhD, FRCPCH, FRCPath

Associate Professor

Senior Clinical Research Fellow
Consultant in Microbiology
Director of the Cambodia Oxford Medical Research Unit

Clinical microbiologist with a focus on paediatric infections

Paul Turner is based at the Cambodia-Oxford Medical Research Unit (COMRU), Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

His research interests include:

Antimicrobial resistance surveillance and control;
Paediatric healthcare associated infections;
Pneumococcal colonisation and disease and the impact of pneumococcal vaccines;
Utilisation of bacterial colonisation data.

His non-research work focuses on development of human and laboratory capacity for diagnostic microbiology in low-resource settings.

Key publications

Dense genomic sampling identifies highways of pneumococcal recombination
Chewapreecha C. et al, (2014), Nature Genetics, 46, 305 - 309
Improved Detection of Nasopharyngeal Cocolonization by Multiple Pneumococcal Serotypes by Use of Latex Agglutination or Molecular Serotyping by Microarray
Turner P. et al, (2011), Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 49, 1784 - 1789
Evolution of antibiotic resistance is linked to any genetic mechanism affecting bacterial duration of carriage
Lehtinen S. et al, (2017), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 1075 - 1080
Antimicrobial Resistance in Invasive Bacterial Infections in Hospitalized Children, Cambodia, 2007–2016
Fox-Lewis A. et al, (2018), Emerging Infectious Diseases, 24, 841 - 851

Recent publications

Genomic surveillance for hypervirulence and multi-drug resistance in invasive Klebsiella pneumoniae from South and Southeast Asia
Wyres KL. et al, (2020), Genome Medicine, 12
Automating the Generation of Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Reports: Proof-of-Concept Study Involving Seven Hospitals in Seven Countries
Lim C. et al, (2020), Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22, e19762 - e19762
Detection of colonisation by extended-spectrum beta-lactamase or carbapenemase producing Enterobacterales from frozen stool specimens.
Tan P. et al, (2020), BMC research notes, 13
Setting priorities for patient-centered surveillance of drug-resistant infections
Ashley EA. et al, (2020), International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 97, 60 - 65
Burkholderia pseudomallei multi-centre study to establish EUCAST MIC and zone diameter distributions and epidemiological cut-off (ECOFF) values
Karatuna O. et al, (2020), Clinical Microbiology and Infection

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