Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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hormonal contraception

Contraception and HIV risk

Does hormonal contraception increase the risk for a woman to acquire HIV from an infected partner?

This topic, with implications for public health in countries where HIV risk is high, has been contentious. Some previous studies had found the answer to be yes, for methods involving injectable progesterone such as Depo-Provera. This led the World Health Organization in 2012 to advise women using progesterone-only injections to use condoms to prevent HIV infection.

At the recent AIDS 2014 meeting in Australia, Emory epidemiologist Kristin Wall presented data from public health programs in Zambia. This is another study emerging from the Zambia-Emory HIV Research Project directed by Susan Allen.

Wall’s presentation is available here.

Studying 1393 heterosexual couples with a HIV-positive male partner over 17 years, Wall and her colleagues found no significant difference in incidence rate per 100 couple years between hormonal and non-hormonal forms of contraception. Read more

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment