Europe UK CU- Scottish scientists have joined hands with scientists from the Zambia to develop innovative solutions affecting many in Sub-Saharan Africa an area covering most of the African continent and all of Africa’s commonwealth nations.
The Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre is hosting the University of Zambia’s, Ms Kanekwa Zyambo to look into the possibility of developing new technology to gain more insights on environmental enteropathy (EE).
A grant of £2.9m UKRI Medical Research Council-funded the partnership with scientists at the University of Glasgow, the University of Zambia, Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London.
EE is prevalent among tropical nations such as Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and Latin America, which usually leads to chronic intestinal inflammation that is often asymptomatic with irregular stool movements in some cases. EE can lead to poor immunity, decreased iron absorption leading to anemia together with the poor impact of oral vaccines among others.
The research team hope to optimize a technique to identify the level of gut damage by evaluating patient breath, as early detection of gut damage could commence treatment that prevents the detrimental effects, such as chronic gut inflammation and, in some occasions, severe infection and mortality.
A device has already been developed where breath is evaluated with a procedure referred to as isotope ratio infrared spectrometry, where patients take table sugar with a bit more stable isotope form of carbon than is generally consumed. After 2 hours of consuming the sugar, the patients breathe into tubes where a device uses a laser to measure the breath isotopic composition indicating the sugar level digested by the gut and exhaled as carbon dioxide. The results differ in relation to the health of the patients gut.
Dr Douglas Morrison of SUERC is assisting Ms Zyambo optimise the Thermofisher Delta Ray infrared spectrometer for the breath test results, where Ms Zyambo will implement the University of Zambia’s teaching hospital to install the equipment and commence further breath test trials.
