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

leprosy

Attending to neglected tropical diseases

As Georgia’s immigrant and refugee communities grow, so do Georgia’s cases of infectious tropical diseases. Also known as neglected tropical diseases, these illnesses are endemic in some low-resource countries and cause considerable disability and dysfunction.

Carlos Franco-Paredes, MD, MPH

Carlos Franco-Paredes, MD, MPH

Carlos Franco-Paredes, MD, MPH, a researcher and clinician at the Emory TravelWell Clinic at Emory’s midtown campus, provides pre- and post-travel health care to international travelers, including faculty, staff, students, business travelers and missionaries. Franco-Paredes, an expert in infectious diseases, also treats immigrants and refugees affected by neglected tropical diseases. He and colleagues recently received funding to study the epidemiology and treatment outcomes of tropical infectious diseases in immigrant and refugee communities in Georgia.

With a grant from the Healthcare Georgia Foundation, Franco-Paredes and his colleagues are assessing the prevalence and the outcomes of hepatitis B, Chagas disease and leprosy.

In fact, the clinic is the main referral center for leprosy in the region, and physicians there currently care for about 25 patients with leprosy, a chronic disease. Most of the cases are found in foreign-born individuals, particularly patients from Central and South America and Asia.

Franco-Paredes’ collaborators include Uriel Kitron, PhD, Emory professor and chair, Environmental Studies, and Sam Marie Engle, senior associate director, Emory’s Office of University Community Partnerships.

To hear Franco-Paredes’ own words about his research into neglected tropical diseases, listen to Emory’s Sound Science podcast.

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