STM: What are the causes of brain infections in Ugandan children?

2, 2020 /---Xin--- -- Newly discovered bacteria and common viral infections in Uganda may be the root cause of hydrocephalus, according to a recent study.
is the most common childhood neurosurgery disease in the local population," said Edith Mbabazi-Kabachelor, research director at CURE Children's Hospital in Uganda.
If hydrocephaly in children younger than two years of age is not treated in a timely manner, a gradual increase in head size will lead to further brain damage, which will lead to the death of most children, while those who survive suffer from severe cognitive and physical impairments.
(Photo Source: Schiff Lab, Penn State) According to a recent paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the National Institutes of Health discovered the main bacteria and viruses of these infections in a five-year study in Uganda using advanced genomics techniques.
Schiff and his team have been studying the problem for more than a decade, but in the last five years they have used another method, US DNA and RNA sequencing, to identify pathogens.
researchers studied blood and cerebrospinal fluid in 100 cases in Uganda that were infected with hydrocephalocephalic fluid and 200 patients without infection.
64 cases of hydrocephaly after infection and 36 cases of hydrocephaly after infection.
all babies are under three months of age.
researchers prepare samples in two ways (freshly frozen and preserved) and send them to two different laboratories in the United States, where they are analyzed using different techniques.
this is to ensure effective and repeatable results.
study found a previously uncensored type of anti-ammonia thiobacteria, now known as "Mbale" in the city where CURE Children's Hospital is located.
Schiff said: "The initial link between hydrocephalus and rod spores was done through high-volume sequencing and PCR analysis at the Center for Infection and Immunization at Columbia University's Melman School of Public Health.
" researchers managed to develop new strains of bacteria that were difficult to culture at Pennsylvania State University and tested them in mice and found them to be fatal to mice.
we tested babies under three months of age, most of us were able to identify infections in infants under six weeks of age," he said.
if we didn't start researching very early, the infection would disappear quickly, " he said.
will not test positive after the test.
" Schiff was not satisfied with the bacteria that found the problem.
believes the cause of the disease is both bacteria and viruses, so the team is looking for genetic material from viruses, fungi and parasites.
, they found cytocytovirus (CMV) in the cerebrospinal fluid of infected babies, while other hydrocephalus patients did not.
CMV is a common virus around the world.
Although a baby may be born with a congenital cytomexual virus, or obtain it early in life, and suffer severe damage to the nervous system, the virus can cause mild symptoms, if any, in most adults.
found the cytocytovirus only in the cerebrospinal fluid of babies infected with hydrocephalus.
researchers believe they have found the source of infections that cause high levels of hydrocephalus, they don't know where babies encounter new bacteria.
, according to Schiff, may be soil or aquatic and more work is needed to find the source of the bacteria.
researchers are creating predictive models and combining data they now analyze from rainfall from thousands of infants and satellites to predict the best treatment for each location.
researchers say they don't know if this particular combination of bacterial viruses is still present outside Uganda.
, the same strategy for diagnosing previously unknown causes of similar infections using DNA and RNA can be used in many other parts of developing countries where similar cases have been detected.
(bioon.com) Source: Bacteria virus combo may be cause of neonatal brains in Uganda Source: J.N. Paulson at Genentech Inc. in South San Francisco, CA el al., "Paenibacillus with frequent viral coinfection contributes to postinfectious hydrous in Ugandan infants," Science Translational Medicine (2020). stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/ ... scitranslmed.aba0565.