EPI researcher Anthony Maurelli co-authored a chapter entitled “A Brief History of Shigella” as part of the electronic encyclopedia EcoSal Plus, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.
Dr. J. Glenn Morris spoke about the importance of research and science education at the state capitol Wednesday, rallying with the Florida Board of Governors and officials from all 12 of Florida’s public universities to support the launch of a statewide initiative advocating the importance of safety, research, and education at Florida’s universities.
Lieutenant Governor Carlos Lopez-Cantera visited the Emerging Pathogens Institute Thursday to speak with an interdisciplinary team of experts on the Zika virus and other infectious diseases that threaten the state of Florida.
With a $10 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of Florida will lead a highly collaborative research program focused on stopping diseases such as Zika before they spread farther into the United States.
Melioidosis is a less-well known bacterial disease discovered just over 100 years ago in Burma (now Myanmar) in Southeast Asia. It is mostly a disease of the tropical and subtropical regions of the world and is associated with high mortality. Melioidosis is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei that patients, particularly rice farmers, usually acquire from environmental sources such as contaminated soil and water. The disease affects mostly patients with underlying conditions, which include diabetes, malignancies such as cancer, and alcoholism. B. pseudomallei is scarcely transmitted from human-to-human and although it can infect many animals and insects, animal-to-human or insect-to-human transmissions have not been documented.
An expert on Mycobacterium leprae, the bacillus that causes Hansen’s disease, announced Wednesday that armadillos were the only known animal host of the pathogen.
A new 5 year multi-institutional collaborative research grant of $1.85 million funded by the National Science Foundation’s Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (NSF EEID) program will support research on the effect of temperature on 13 different diseases transmitted by insects. It will also measure the capacity for two common disease-carrying mosquitoes in the Americas to adapt to new (or changing) temperatures.
