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Infectious Disease

Lieutenant governor visits EPI

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.

UF researchers organize and participate in the eighth world melioidosis congress 2016

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.

Scientists receive research grant to study climate change impacts on vector-borne diseases

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.