Current Research
IDSI Co-Director Dr. Shruti Gohil's COVID-19 Studies
Dr. Shruti Gohil MD MPH, assistant professor of infectious disease at UC Irvine's School of Medicine and IDSI Co-Director, has three new studies. Click on the link to read more about her new studies.
Project 1: Use of signature COVID-19 features to identify earliest cases in the US and assess impact on antibiotic use, length of stay, and ICU transfer, length of stay, readmission, and death.
Project 2: Evaluation of COVID-19 among healthcare workers (HCW) and the estimated attribution to community, patient, or co-worker sources, including the impact of delayed recognition of COVID-19 on HCW infections.
Project 3: Assessment of the unintended consequences of an “abundance of caution” rationale to avoid healthcare worker COVID exposure on clinical decision-making and quality of patient care.
STOP COVID-19 – Orange County Nursing Home Infection Prevention Collaborative
Dr. Shruti Gohil is collaborating on a new project to educate Orange County nursing homes on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Their goals include online education around hand hygiene, PPE, and disaster preparedness. Click on the link for more information.
Monitoring COVID-19 transmission at UC Irvine: Longitudinal immuno-prevalence surveillance among UCI students
Specific aims of this project are:
1) to determine the prevalence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection among UCI students
2) to estimate the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection over time
3) to refine existing mathematical models of COVID-19 transmission with age-specific estimates of asymptomatic infections among young adults.
This study aims to estimate the prevalence of ongoing and resolved subclinical, asymptomatic SARS-CoV2 infections in high-risk healthcare providers in the emergency department (ED) and intensive critical care unit (ICU) at UCI Medical Center (UCIMC). Completion of the proposed studies will provide critical information for developing and refining interventions to protect high-risk HCPs and informing prediction models for the transmission of SARS-CoV2.
Improved Understanding of Tuberculosis Transmission in Botswana
IDSI Director Sanghyuk Shin and Co-Director Vladimir Minin are leading a five-year NIH R01-funded study to understand how TB spreads in populations affected by HIV. Advanced genetic techniques will be used to identify within-host Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (Mtbc) heterogeneity among TB patients in Botswana. This data will then be integrated with epidemiological and spatial data to help us track how TB spreads. This project is expected to produce groundbreaking information for identifying TB transmission “hotspots”, which can guide public health interventions to prevent the transmission of this deadly global health threat.
Seed Grants Awarded to Fuel Promising New Infectious Disease Research
Solomon Kibret Birhanie
Nicholas Rhoades
Nontuberculous mycobacterium Infection
Role of the microbiome and lung immunity in Nontuberculous mycobacterium infection. We are exposed to Nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM) everyday. For otherwise healthy adults this exposure does not result in any type of infection or harm. However, in the elderly NTM can cause a debilitating pulmonary infection that often requires lifelong multi-drug antibiotic therapy to treat. Although the association between pulmonary NTM infection and age is striking, the mechanisms underlying this dramatic age-related increase in susceptibility are poorly understood. Aging is known to cause changes in our immune system and our microbiome. However, very little is known about how aging changes these factors in our lungs and why this results in NTM infection. In this study, we aim to understand how the lung immune and microbial environment change with age. Additionally, we will profile the immune and microbial response to NTM infection to better understand how age-related defects lead to disease. This study will broaden our understanding of why respiratory infections are more prevalent and severe in the elderly and inform future treatment strategies for NTM infections.
Spatio-temporal analysis of malaria risk related to water resources development – linking field and remote sensed data.
To combat food insecurity and meet increasing water demands under rapid population growth, water resource development projects are anticipated to rapidly increase in sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, environmental change related to these projects may have a negative effect on malaria by increasing mosquito vector breeding site availability. Thus, the goal of this project is to improve our understanding of how dams and reservoir water management influence mosquito ecology and how this translates to intensified malaria transmission around water development schemes. The study will help identify landscape factors associated with hotspots of malaria transmission in dam areas using landscape genetics. The study also aims to identify water management strategies for malaria control around dams. The findings from this study will help devise malaria intervention strategies to reduce malaria around dams in Africa.
