Networking a Cure for HIV

    

Fig.1. HIV illustration (left, credit: ©iStock.com/Rost-9D) and receiving treatment (right, credit: WHO).

Editor’s Note: SciColl held our first community workshop on Emerging Infectious Diseases in October 2014. This October, we're posting several pieces that highlight the important work where collections continue to play an integral role.

Editor’s Note: SciColl intern, Eden Absar from the University of Houston, contributed this article as part of her time in the SciColl office during Summer 2017. 

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is an enigma of an infection that has puzzled scientists, doctors, and researchers since the first presented case in the 1980s. Although the modern medical community continues to study it and gather information, a cure for the disease remains elusive. According to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, as of 2015, there are nearly 37 million people worldwide who have been infected by HIV. Of that number, 1.8 million are children under the age of 15. In 2015, approximately 150,000 children were newly infected with HIV - a rate of nearly 400 new pediatric HIV patients every day. These numbers present a huge problem that appears to grow threateningly larger in the face of the lack of a cure for the disease.

Scientific Collections vs. Pandemics: an unfair match?

Fig. 1. Ebola Signs and Symptoms.

Editor’s Note: SciColl held our first community workshop on Emerging Infectious Diseases in October 2014. This October we're posting several pieces that highlight the important work where collections continue to play an integral role.

Editor’s Note: SciColl intern, Ebubechi Okpalugo from Pembroke College, contributed this article as part of her time in the SciColl office during Summer 2017.

Sweeping across three countries and claiming over 11,000 lives, the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak is almost impossible to forget. First identified in 1976, in a remote village named Zaire in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, there have been multiple outbreaks of the virus since. But the 2014 pandemic, caused by the Zaire strain, has been the most deadly. Striking on the border of three of the poorest African nations, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the virus spread to an unprecedented scale. Liberia, the worst hit, was not officially declared Ebola-free until the 13^th of January 2016.

Could it have been stopped quicker? That’s where scientific collections come in.

Monday Morning Coffee Break: Feb. 22

(Credit: AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan) 

#mosquitoes #samples #Zikavirus #emergingdiseases #climatechange

Experts talk scientific collections' role in disease research

Some of the world’s leading minds in emerging infectious diseases met Thursday and Friday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to discuss scientific collections’ role in the disease outbreak cycle and research.

CDC for Wildlife Diseases

Fig.1. Little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) are especially vulnerable to White Nose Syndrome, with 90%-100% mortality during an outbreak (Photographer: Merlin Tuttle)

Last week, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service awarded more than $1.2 million to 30 states in an effort to combat White Nose Syndrome, a deadly disease affecting many bat species. Since its appearance in 2006, this disease has spread fast with greater than 90 percent mortality in some bat species. A 2009 study done by researchers at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, WI, determined that the fatal epizootic was caused by the fungus Pseudogymonoascus destructans. Although the White Nose Syndrome is only known to infect bats, declines in bat populations affect ecosystems and agriculture.

A Modern Solution to an Ancient Problem

Eight centuries before the Black Death, a plague swept through the Byzantine Empire and then Europe with devastating consequences. More than 100 million people were killed from the 6th to 8th centuries in a pandemic known as the Plague of Justinian, or the first pandemic. Until last year, the cause of the disease was disputed, with arguments ranging from influenza to smallpox. Dave Wagner, an associate professor at Northern Arizona University, worked with scientists from around the world to confidently identify the bacterium Yersinia pestis as the cause of the pandemic.