THE CONVERSATION - IDM's Cristian Apetrei discusses the striking parallels between the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics that show the dire consequences disinformation can have on both patients and society as a whole. COVID-19 isn’t the first pandemic where false and harmful information has set back public health. What sets this pandemic apart, however, is the sheer magnitude of damaging disinformation put in circulation around the world. Data sho...
2022 Craig Award winner, Jeremy Martinson, is an assistant professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology (IDM), vice chair for research and program director of the Master of Public Health degree. “As a mentor, Dr. Martinson is extremely friendly and personable. He shows a genuine interest and cares for the well-being of students, and someone can talk to him about anything school or life-related. He is extremely knowledgeabl...
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE - After a man in Rockland County, New York, became the first patient to contract polio in the U.S. in nearly a decade, experts such as IDM’s Peter Salk — whose late father, Jonas, developed a vaccine for the disease — said the public shouldn’t be alarmed but warned that children unvaccinated for polio could be at risk. “Polio is only a plane flight away,” Salk said. “Here is a circumstance that demonstrated that.”
TRIB LIVE - A rapidly spreading covid variant is highly contagious and can cause breakthrough infections, but it’s not more severe or dangerous than prior strains, local experts say. The omicron subvariant — known as BA.5 — has “really taken off, nationally and locally,” said Dr. Lee Harrison, professor of infectious disease and epidemiology.
“It is very, very infectious,” Harrison said. “There’s no doubt about it. In terms of immun...
You don’t have to look far to find a School of Public Health (SPH) graduate among the people working within the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD) to ensure the well-being of western Pennsylvanians.
"The school really is a feeder institution," says LuAnn Brink (EPI '99), PhD, a 12-year ACHD veteran and chief epidemiologist since 2014. Brink supervises the county's Bureau of Data Reporting and Disease Control and oversees surveillance...
VOICE OF AMERICA - Pregnancy puts women at higher risk of severe medical complications or death from COVID-19, according to a new study of more than 1,300 women in sub-Saharan Africa. "Africa is not Europe, is not the U.S.A.," said IDM and EPI's Jean Nachega, lead author of the new study. "We should not just rely on data coming from the U.S., Europe or China to try to understand COVID on the continent."
In the study , published in the jou...
HEALIO - Alexander Sundermann (IDM '14, EPI '22) and colleagues find real-time genomic surveillance is able to detect hospital outbreaks using an approach they call Enhanced Detection System for Healthcare-Associated Transmission, which would allow hospitals to detect outbreaks early and intervene quickly. Sundermann says, "We believe that this will substantially improve patient safety" and that "sequencing surveillance will eventually become ro...
IDM student Rachel Merritt won first place among master’s students for the project, “Effects of Climate Change on Lyme Disease Incidence: A Literature Review”.
IDM student Bethany Flage won the Rosenkranz Award for the project, “Heme as a causative factor for Plasmodium falciparum sexual commitment”.
U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT - A groundbreaking analysis of decades-old stool and blood samples from the early AIDS epidemic suggests that men who had high levels of inflammation-causing bacteria in their intestinal tract may have had a greater risk for contracting HIV. "A healthy gut microbiome is essential for many bodily functions…" said IDM’s Yue Chen, lead author. “Scientists are increasingly learning that it has other wide-ranging impacts.
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