University of Tennessee and Atom Sciences develop test for deadly African disease
Tuesday July 17, 2007
Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley researchers are taking aim at a deadly African disease – Buruli ulcer...
Oak Ridge and Knoxville, Tenn. – Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley researchers are taking aim at a deadly African disease – Buruli ulcer. A new grant from the National Institutes of Health will help researchers at Atom Sciences and the University of Tennessee better understand how people contract the disease, which resembles leprosy.
The $98,000 grant will enable researchers to test a new diagnostic technique to determine how a person might have acquired the disease from the environment around them.
Prominent in West Africa, the disease causes a skin lesion that, in turn, can lead to infections so severe that limbs may simply fall off.
The disease itself is not contagious; infected persons acquire the bacteria from their environment. Atom Sciences' new diagnostic technique may allow researchers to know where a person first acquired the bacteria.
Atom Sciences researcher Richard Hurt will lead the study, working with UT microbiology professor Pamela Small, a leading expert in the study of Buruli ulcer.
CONTACTS:
Tom Whitaker
President, Atom Sciences
865-483-1113,
whitaker@atom-sci.com
Jay Mayfield
UT media relations
865-974-9409
jay.mayfield@tennessee.edu
