News
Ye wins the 2nd place clinical research prize at the 20th Annual Respiratory Disease Young Investigators' Forum
The annual Young Investigators’ Forum in Denver has been a catalyst for groundbreaking discoveries and is a celebration of talent and ingenuity in respiratory medicine. Physician-scientists in fellowship and early career stages are eligible with stiff competition for the top prizes. Congratulations to Ye for such and amazing achievement so early in her research career!
Ye presenting her talk in Denver.
Our work in Uganda featured by Harvard Health Buildings for Health in 2024
Link to post
We have shown that the provision of indoor solar lighting systems has high uptake, reduced exposure to air pollution even without altering exposure to biomass fuel used in cooking, is cost effective, and had unanticipated far-reaching benefits including improved social cohesion, household safety, better school performance, and mitigated the stigma of poverty. Ongoing work is now focused on the effect of air pollution exposure reduction on the gut microbiome and virome. The results of this work ultimately contributed to a recent multidisciplinary research statement from the American Thoracic Society focused on recommendations for future studies in household air pollution.
Open wick kerosene lamp (“tadooba” in local language) used for light
Edwin receives a NIH K43 Career Development award
Congratulations to Edwin, for receiving a 5-year career development award from the NIH for his project “Improving Diagnostic Strategies for Post-Tuberculosis Lung Disease in Ugandan Primary Healthcare Settings”. Despite the advocacy and awareness about tuberculosis (TB), post-TB morbidity and disability have been neglected by TB programs in Africa. Post-TB lung disease, or debilitating lung disease that remains after microbiologic cure, has not been well studied. Edwin established the first post-TB clinic in southwest Uganda to provide care for these patients. His career development award will focus on developing clinical algorithms that can be implemented in low-resource settings to identify high risk patients at the time of TB diagnosis for early referral.
Chest CT scan of patient at the time of microbiologic TB cure.
Aribah presents poster at Northeastern Research, Innovation, Scholarship, and Entrepreneurship (RISE) 2024 Expo
Northeastern PEAK Grants
Congratulations to Aribah, who received a Northeastern PEAK Summit Grant for undergraduates for her project “Does student symptom screening work to reduce school respiratory virus exposure?”. Aribah was selected to present her work at the the 2024 Northeastern RISE Expo.
Ye receives Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health ERC Center pilot grant to study school viral exposures for teachers
2023 Harvard ERC Center
Congratulations to Ye for being awarded a HSPH ERC pilot grant “School inner city air study: Teacher occupational exposure to respiratory viruses in elementary schools”.
Metagenomic assessment of gut microbial communities and risk of severe COVID-19
2023 Genome Medicine
The gut microbiome is associated with severity of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients. Opportunities for intervention?
Gut microbiome associated with severity of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients
Preferred Language Mediates Association Between Race, Ethnicity, and Delayed Presentation in Critically Ill Patients With COVID-19
2023 Critical Care Explorations
Congratulations to Mike, Sirus and Adna (a summer college student) on their paper! It’s time we moved beyond describing disparities in health care and started trying to understand mechanism so we can design interventions to reduce health disparities. In this paper, we use mediation analysis to show that preferred language explains a large part of why patients from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds have delayed presentation to the hospital after developing COVID symptoms. Time for designing interventions focused on language?
Mediation analysis of race and ethnicity predicting delay to admission, mediated by preferred language.
Prolonged Prone Position Ventilation Is Associated With Reduced Mortality in Intubated COVID-19 Patients
2022 Chest
Congratulations to Dan and Jessica on their paper demonstrating that prolonged prone position ventilation improves survival in critically ill patients with COVID-19. This paper was also featured in a MGH Advances in Motion article. Despite advances in therapy, mortality has not improved for patients with COVID-19 who require life support. In a collaborative effort involving physicians at MGH, NWH, and Salem Hospital, we show that prolonged time in the prone position reduces mortality, does not lead to more complications, and may reduce provider workload. Should we consider this therapy in other causes of acute respiratory failure?
Kaplan-Meier Plot of the Probability of Survival from Time of Proning to 90 days. (A) in the entire cohort, and (B) in patients with PaO2/FIO2 ≤ 150 at time of pronation.
Supplemental Oxygen Alters the Airway Microbiome in Cystic Fibrosis
2022 mSystems
Congratulations to Jake and Sirus on their paper demonstrating the effect of oxygen on the airway microbiome. This paper was also featured in a MGH Advances in Motion article. Oxygen is one of the most commonly administered therapies for advanced lung disease and lung failure. Does oxygen favor the growth of lung pathogens? What does this mean for clinical practice?
The environmental microbiome, allergic disease and asthma
2022 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice
We know the human microbiome influences the development of allergic diseases, but what about the microbiome of our environment? Mike’s review summarizes the state of the field and highlights the importance of thinking about the microbiome surrounding us as well as within us.
Peggy receives the 2022 ATS EOPH Early Career Achievement Award
2022 American Thoracic Society Meeting in San Francisco
The award is given annually to individuals within 10 years from completion of postdoctoral training for exemplary support and commitment to the EOPH mission and with recognized contributions to the assembly in the areas of research, improving public health, teaching, mentoring, and/or service.
Peggy also received the 2022 MGH Department of Medicine Award for Excellence in Resident Scholarship Mentoring.
Congratulations to Edwin for his ATS Diversity Grant!
2022 American Thoracic Society Meeting in San Francisco
Preferred Language Mediates Association Between Race, Ethnicity and Delayed Presentation to Care in Critically Ill Patients with COVID-19
2022 American Thoracic Society Meeting in San Francisco
Mike giving an oral presentation at the 2022 ATS meeting.
Design and Development of a Model to Study the Effect of Supplemental Oxygen on the Cystic Fibrosis Airway Microbiome
2021 Journal of Visualized Experiments
Jake filming video for his publication focused on developing a way to study how oxygen affects the lung microbiome in people with cystic fibrosis.
‘They Want to Kill Me’: Many Covid Patients Have Terrifying Delirium
New York Times
Peggy quoted discussing her experience treating one of her COVID patients, who experienced delirium and hallucinations during his stay at the hospital.
Impact of DNA Extraction Method on Variation in Human and Built Environment Microbial Community and Functional Profiles Assessed by Shotgun Metagenomics Sequencing
2020 Frontiers in Microbiology
Congratulations to Birdy (Hui-yu) for her first author publication in Frontiers in Microbiology demonstrating the important impacts of DNA extraction method on the results of shotgun metagenomic studies.
32 Days on a Ventilator: One Covid Patient’s Fight to Breathe Again
New York Times
Peggy quoted on the subject of COVID disease progression and the problematic lack of predictive factors to forecast outcomes.
