Infectious diseases

Background: Within six weeks of the first case of COVID-19 in early Dec 2019 in Wuhan, China, the pandemic had already a foothold half-way around the world in Washington State, where the the first case of COVID-19 in the United States was confirmed on 20 Jan 2020 in a traveler returning from the index city.

I led a project with the Woodland Park Zoo’s Senior Conservation Scientist, Dr. Lisa Dabek, and Director of the UW Center for One Health Research, Dr. Peter Rabinowitz.

Wastewater surveillance has long been used to aid the global public health effort to eradicate poliovirus. More recently, wastewater surveillance has been implemented to help understand the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Shortly after it was discovered to be shed in stools, the virus was detected in sewage around the world.

Wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 provides an approach for assessing theinfection burden across a sewer service area. For these data to be useful for public health, measurement variability in relation to normalization methods need to be established.

Introduction: Infection control is important in the veterinary care setting due to the risk of zoonotic illness1–4, however research has consistently shown that veterinary workers tend to underestimate their risk and have lower rates of proper personal protective equipment (PPE) use5–9.

Staphylococcus aureus are both human commensal bacteria and potential pathogens. The aim of this study was to isolate and characterize methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) from coastal beach and river waters, anchialine pools, sand, and wastewater on the Island of Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi.

Exposure to zoonotic disease is a significant occupational risk in veterinary medicine. In this study, we characterized PPE use, injury frequency, and Bartonella seroreactivity in Washington State veterinary workers.

Workers who come into contact with tuberculosis (TB) patients are at elevated risk of TB infection and disease. Tongue swabbing is an alternative diagnostic sample collection approach that was designed to mitigate this risk. This study assessed risk perceptions among healthcare workers (HCWs) using tongue swabs for TB diagnosis in South Africa during a respiratory virus pandemic.

Tongue swabs have shown promise as alternatives to sputum for detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Some of the most promising results have come from studies that used manual quantitative PCR (qPCR) to analyze swabs.

Antimicrobial resistant bacteria (ARB) can be shared between humans and animals through a common environment. The surveillance of ARB in the environment can inform us about contamination of shared ecosystems, like the Salish Sea, and how that contamination affects both the animals that rely on the ecosystem and humans who also live within it.

Environmental contamination of pathogenic viruses is a common occurrence and leading to a number of skin, enteric, and respiratory infections in occupational, nosocomial, and community settings. Viruses with environmental transmission routes have varied abilities to survive and persist in environmental mediums to aiding in their transmission to susceptible hosts.

Diarrheal disease remains a persistent global health threat and is ranked as the second leading cause of death for children under the age of five, with approximately 525,000 child deaths worldwide annually.

Background: Dengue fever (DF) is the most common mosquito-borne viral disease, with an estimated 390 million infections a year, globally. In 1994, Saudi Arabia reported their first confirmed case of DF in the western coastal city of Jeddah.

Oral swabs are emerging as a non-invasive sampling method for diagnosis of infectious diseases such as Ebola and tuberculosis. This project evaluated quality assurance strategies to assure proper sample collection. Two sample adequacy controls (SAC) that detect substances that are differentially present in properly versus improperly collected samples were assessed.

No study has been undertaken in Washington state to determine if there is an association between agricultural fairs and Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) infections, despite a fair-associated outbreak in 2015 that sickened 60 people.

Typhoid fever continues to be a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality, especially in developing countries with limited access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.

Background: Worldwide, dengue fever is the most common arboviral disease in humans with an estimated 50–100 million dengue infections annually.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the persistence of poliovirus type 2 (PV2) and type 3 (PV3) in domestic wastewater and sediment.

Cryptosporidium and giardia are diarrhea-causing microscopic parasites transmitted through ingestion of fecally contaminated water. Both parasites can have a significant impact on the health and financial burden of communities.

With antimicrobial resistance being one of the top global public health threats, integrated antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems are critical in gathering data, understanding resistance trends, creating stewardship plans and accurately quantifying resistance at national and local levels.