Presenter: Supraja Kanipakam, Public Health Science, Global Public Health Scholars
Infectious diseases kill over 17 million people a year. The inevitable, but unpredictable, appearance of new infectious or emerging viruses are a major threat to human health and global stability. Today, despite advancements in diagnostics and therapeutics, residual risk is unavoidable. Characterizing pathogens present in blood donors is needed to discover prevalence and epidemiology of viruses to anticipate new threats. Advanced technologies such as Next-Generation sequencing (NGS) has the ability to simultaneously detect multiple-blood borne pathogens (bacteria, viruses, and/or parasites) present within patient samples. Among patients with “influenza-like” (ILI) symptoms, by using DNA sequencing and bioinformatic programs, we found that bacteria present in blood samples is E.coli and viruses present are phlebovirus, Uukuniemi and Semliki virus. Furthermore, among 10 HCV patient samples, 4 were discovered with HCV co-infected with the Pegivirus, which is a novel virus that has been recently discovered. We learned, in addition to NGS’s remarkable ability to rapidly detect viruses, the importance of DNA and biomedical research. If we can predict, discover, and prevent novel and emerging viruses before they strike an outbreak, we can save human lives.