Health & Environment

Prone To Sickness? Blame Your Genes

Whether or not you get sick might have something to do with your genetic makeup.
By Christina Sumners, Texas A&M Health Science Center February 8, 2016

sick
Researchers are interested in finding ways to delay the onset of severe symptoms due to infectious agents the military might encounter in the field.

(Vital Record)

When a soldier in the field is exposed to an infectious agent, it’s a race against time to get him or her back to a hospital for care. But what if that ticking clock could be paused, or at least extended?

That’s the hope of the multi-center collaborative grant from the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The researchers—including two from the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine—are interested in finding ways to delay the onset of severe symptoms due to infectious agents the military might encounter in the field.

The team is focusing on three major infections: methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the Ebola virus and Nipah virus. For each, there is no cure and no vaccine, but a hospital environment can provide supportive care to help patients survive these potentially deadly diseases.

Co-led by David Threadgill, Ph.D., a university distinguished professor in the Department of Molecular & Cellular Medicine and the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology. the team at the College of Medicine is focusing on host tolerance mechanisms. “We want to understand what makes some people tolerant to infectious agents,” he said. “In other words, why do some people who are exposed not develop severe symptoms until a much later time?”

After ruling out possible differences in age and level of exposure—which are known to make a difference in whether an individual becomes symptomatic—Threadgill wants to look for individuals who are resistant to becoming ill or who become ill much later or much less severely. “We’re making the argument that these are probably genetic factors,” Threadgill said. “These factors could be mediated through the immune system, or it could be differences in other aspects of the infection process.”

These genetic factors that determine susceptibility to infection are likely distributed, to a greater or lesser extent, throughout a population.

“An example is the recent Ebola outbreak,” Threadgill said. “Epidemiological studies found that there were a subset of people who had a much-delayed response to the infectious agent and less severe symptoms.” It seems to be genetic diversity that explains why some people get very sick and die and others—who had the same standard of care—get very sick and get better, while others who are exposed either don’t get sick at all or who suffer only relatively mild symptoms.

Continue reading on Vital Record.

This article by Christina Sumners originally appeared in Vital Record.

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