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

Guinea

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 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment