California, USA (CU)_ After receiving a $8.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, an Indian-American professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, will spearhead a team investigating the phenomena of Valley Fever. Dr. Manish Butte and his colleagues will investigate why some patients infected with Valley fever get a potentially lethal form of the disease that wreaks havoc on their bodies, while the majority suffer relatively minor symptoms or none at all.
According to a media release issued by the University, the UCLA team, headed by Professor Butte, has received a $8.4 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to investigate additional questions about genetic risk factors and immune responses to disease. The disease was initially recognized in Argentina in the late 1800s. It is caused by inhaling minute spores of the fungus Coccidioides that are found in soil.
Today, Valley fever is found in a geographical swath extending from South America to Central America and Mexico, and finally into the American Southwest. While most individuals who acquire symptoms recover on their own or with the assistance of antifungal treatment, those who get a severe or disseminated version of the illness can become critically ill and finally die.
According to the press release, Professor Butte, who is the E. Richard Stiehm Professor of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, said, “Everyone in the endemic areas is susceptible to this infection, but we have almost no ability to predict who will develop disseminated disease and lack an understanding of what part of their immune response fails to control the infection”.
According to the statement, the five-year grant will form a Coccidioidomycosis Collaborative Research Center at UCLA and UC San Diego, where Butte and colleagues will research on innate and adaptive immune responses to Valley fever, the genomic basis for increased susceptibility to the disease, and the process by which the fungus evades the body’s immune system. Two identical institutes, one at UC San Francisco and the other at the University of Texas at San Antonio, will investigate how the illness targets the body and strive to create medicines and vaccinations.
