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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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Case report on first newborn to survive Ebola

Pediatric infectious diseases specialist Anita McElroy was a co-author on a case report on the first newborn to survive Ebola infection, published recently in Journal of Infectious Diseases.

“Of all the work I’ve been privileged to be involved in over the past few years, this paper was one of the most personally satisfying,” McElroy writes.

The child described in the paper is named Nubia; she is mentioned in several news stories from 2015. She was the last known Ebola case in Guinea, one of three African countries hit hard by the virus in 2014 and 2015. Her mother died shortly after her birth.

Nubia leaves hospital in Guinea. Photo from Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Nubia was cared for at the Ebola treatment ward run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, aka Doctors without Borders) in Conakry, Guinea. She was given three experimental therapies: ZMapp antibodies, survivor white blood cell transfusion and an antiviral drug called GS-5734. It is not clear which of these interventions were critical for Nubia’s recovery, although the paper makes clear that ZMapp did not result in viral suppression all by itself.

McElroy is a go-to person for studies of dangerous viruses such as Ebola, Lassa and Zika, partly because of her affiliation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Viral Special Pathogens Branch. She advised the MSF team on the use of the antiviral drug and other interventions.

Posted on January 13, 2017 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

How antiviral antibodies become part of immune memory

Weapons production first, research later. During wartime, governments follow these priorities, and so does the immune system.

When fighting a bacterial or viral infection, an otherwise healthy person will make lots of antibodies, blood-borne proteins that grab onto the invaders. The immune system also channels some of its resources into research: storing some antibody-making cells as insurance for a future encounter, and tinkering with the antibodies to improve them.

In humans, scientists know a lot about the cells involved in immediate antibody production, called plasmablasts, but less about the separate group of cells responsible for the “storage/research for the future” functions, called memory B cells. Understanding how to elicit memory B cells, along with plasmablasts, is critical for designing effective vaccines.

EbolaBcells

Activated B cells (blue) and plasmablasts (red) in patients hospitalized for Ebola virus infection, with a healthy donor for comparison. From Ellebedy et al Nature Immunology (2016).

Researchers at Emory Vaccine Center and Stanford’s Department of Pathology have been examining the precursors of memory B cells, called activated B cells, after influenza vaccination and infection and during Ebola virus infection. The Ebola-infected patients were the four who were treated at Emory University Hospital’s Serious Communicable Disease Unit in 2014.

The findings were published Monday, August 15 in Nature Immunology.

“Ebola virus infection represents a situation when the patients’ bodies were encountering something they’ve never seen before,” says lead author Ali Ellebedy, PhD, senior research scientist at Emory Vaccine Center. “In contrast, during both influenza vaccination and infection, the immune system generally is relying on recall.”

Unlike plasmablasts, activated B cells do not secrete antibodies spontaneously, but can do so if stimulated. Each B cell carries different rearrangements in its DNA, corresponding to the specificity and type of antibody it produces. The rearrangements allowed Ellebedy and his colleagues to track the activated B cells, like DNA bar codes, as an immune response progresses. Read more

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

Measuring microbiome disruption

How should doctors measure how messed up someone’s intestinal microbiome is?

This is the topic of a recent paper in American Journal of Infection Control from Colleen Kraft and colleagues from Emory and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The corresponding author is epidemiologist Alison Laufer Halpin at the CDC.

A “microbiome disruption index” could inform decisions on antibiotic stewardship, where a patient should be treated or interventions such as fecal microbial transplant (link to 2014 Emory Medicine article) or oral probiotic capsules.

What the authors are moving towards is similar to Shannon’s index, which ecologists use to measure diversity of species. Another way to think about it is like the Gini coefficient, a measure of economic inequality in a country. If there are many kinds of bacteria living in someone’s body, the disruption index should be low. If there is just one dominant type of bacteria, the disruption index should be high.

In the paper, the authors examined samples from eight patients in a long-term acute care hospital (Wesley Woods) who had recently developed diarrhea. Using DNA sequencing, they determined what types of bacteria were present in patients’ stool. The patients’ samples were compared with those from two fecal microbial transplant donors. Read more

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology, Uncategorized Leave a comment

All the boulders at the same time

Emory is preparing to launch a center devoted to antibiotic resistance. On Wednesday, Arjun Srinivasan, one of the CDC’s point people for antibiotic use and hospital acquired infections, kicked off the preparations with a talk on the multifaceted nature of this problem.

Without attempting to cover everything related to antibiotic resistance (that would take a book — or several), I will note in an upcoming post how Emory and partners such as Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta already have begun assembling many of the necessary tools.

Tackling antibiotic resistance has to take into account the habits of physicians, the expectations of patient, improved surveillance and antibiotic overuse in agriculture, as well as research on new antibiotics and detecting dangerous bacteria. In short, it’s both a science and policy issue — captured well by the documentary Resistance.

At the end of his talk, Srinivasan made a remark that brought this home for me, saying “We just have to push all the boulders up the hill at the same time” in response to a question about balancing effort on science vs policy. Allusions to Sisyphus!

Yet he provided some hope too, highlighting a recent CDC study that models how a coordinated response to antibiotic resistance in health care facilities could substantially cut infections. Read more

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Ebola’s capriciousness in kids

Anita McElroy, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Emory, and her colleagues at the CDC, led by Christina Spiropoulou, have been getting some attention for their biomarker research on Ebola virus infection. Sheri Fink from the New York Times highlighted their work in a Nov. 9 report on the infection’s capriciousness. Genetics may also play a role in surviving Ebola infection, as recent animal research has suggested.

McElroy’s team’s findings attracted notice because their results suggest that Ebola virus disease may affect children differently and thus, children may benefit from different treatment regimens than those for adults. The authors write that early intervention to prevent injury to the lining of blood vessels — using statins, possibly — might be a therapeutic strategy in pediatric patients. Read more

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

Number of diabetic Americans could triple by 2050

As many as 1 in 3 U.S. adults could have diabetes by 2050, federal officials recently announced.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 1 in 10 have diabetes now – approximately 24 million Americans – but that number could grow to 1 in 5 or even 1 in 3 by mid-century if current trends continue.

The report was published in the Oct. 22 issue of Population Health Metrics. Edward Gregg, Emory adjunct professor of global health, and David Williamson, Emory visiting professor of global health, were co-authors.

The CDC’s projections have been a work in progress. The last revision put the number at 39 million in 2050. The new estimate takes it to the range of 76 million to 100 million.

The growth in U.S. diabetes cases has been closely tied to escalating obesity rates. A corresponding rise in diabetes has even prompted researchers to coin a new hybrid term: diabesity.

“There is an epidemic going on that, if left unchecked, will have a huge effect on the U.S. population and on health care costs,” says K. M. Venkat Narayan, MD, MSc, MBA, professor of global health and epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, who came to Emory from the CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation. “The numbers are very worrying.”

K. M. Venkat Narayan, MD, MSc, MBA

Narayan also heads the Emory Global Diabetes Research Center, which aims to find solutions to the growing global diabetes epidemic. The Center serves as the research leader and hub for population-based research and large intervention trials throughout South Asia and globally.

“Whatever we do, the fruits of our research have to be available to people everywhere,” says Narayan.

Read more about Dr. Narayan’s global efforts and diabetes research underway at Emory.

Hear Dr. Narayan talk about the Global Diabetes Research Center.

Posted on October 29, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Health sciences on the A-List

Parade magazine’s back-to-school survey in the August 22 issue and website included Emory on its A-list of colleges with excellent programs in the health sciences.

“Good health programs combine strong academic preparation with a hands-on approach and offer a wide variety of choice,” said the magazine.

“Emory University, a stand-out in health sciences, has the Centers for Disease Control virtually next door.”

Emory also made the A-list for its pre-med programs:

“At Emory, students interested in the field of medicine have the opportunity to gain first-hand exposure to the daily routine of the physician through their House Staff Assistant program. Students witness all aspects of the job and become integral parts of the medical team, which consists of attending physicians, resident physicians, and medical students.”

The list of outstanding schools was based on the recommendations of 43 top guidance counselors across the country.

Posted on September 20, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Study: ADHD linked to pesticide exposure

A study published in the May 17, 2010, issue of the journal Pediatrics found that one type of pesticide commonly used on fruits and vegetables may be contributing to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, in children.

The study measured the levels of pesticide byproducts in the urine of 1,139 children from across the United States. Children with the highest concentration of pesticides in their urine were more likely to have symptoms of ADHD.

Dana Boyd Barr, PhD, a research professor in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory, spent more than 20 years studying pesticide exposure at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Barr was not a member of the research team that published these findings on pesticides and ADHD, but data generated in her former CDC lab was analyzed for this particular study.

Barr says while the study doesn’t prove causality between pesticide exposures and ADHD, it does shed light on how even low level daily exposures to pesticides could potentially impact cognitive health.

“It seems very plausible that low-level daily exposures to pesticides can produce some subtle effects like ADHD or other neurological delays,” she says.

Barr notes that additional research is needed to confirm a connection to pesticides and ADHD, but says there are tips for limiting your exposure to commonly used pesticides.

“We’ve done studies here at Emory and also at CDC that have indicated that if you use organic food or if you wash your food properly prior to preparation, you can reduce the levels of these metabolites in your urine.  Eat as much organic produce as possible, or wash your fruits and vegetables very well and that likely could decrease the chances of your children developing ADHD,” says Barr.

Posted on June 4, 2010 by admin in Neuro Leave a comment

WHO Director Chan highlights global health changes, challenges

Dr. Margaret Chan

On World TB Day, March 16, Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, addressed public health professionals at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta at the eighth annual Jeffrey P. Koplan Global Leadership in Public Health Lecture. In introducing Chan, Koplan noted their long-term friendship, which grew from their work together in China.

While in Atlanta, Chan also visited Emory to meet with President James Wagner and Emory Global Health Institute Director Koplan. She heard presentations about global health field projects by students in public health, medicine, and theology.

Chan recalled the “lost decade for development,” the 1980s, a dismal time for public health. The 1979 energy crisis followed by a recession made for tighter public health resources and few health care improvements worldwide, she explained. Some developing countries have still not recovered.

In contrast, public health has faired better in the new millennium, when the world has benefited from financial commitments backed by substantial resources, often from innovative sources, says Chan.
Read more

Posted on March 31, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment