May 04, 2019
The Measles Epidemic
The Measles Epidemic
Guest(s) Appearing on this Episode | ||
Michael Mina Michael Mina, MD, PhD is a resident and clinical research fellow in the Dept. of Pathology at Harvard Medical School / Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Mina earned his AB at Dartmouth College in physics and engineering, his MD and PhD degrees at Emory University and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Immunology, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of Infectious Diseases, and completed his post-doctoral training at Princeton University, in mathematical modeling of infectious diesase dynamics, with Prof. Bryan Grenfell. Dr. Mina’s research draws on biological and mathematical models to investigate infectious diseases from the molecular and immunologic levels through to population dynamics and epidemics. Much of his work has focused on non-specific effects of vaccines on phylogenetically distinct human pathogens – mediated through perturbations of the innate and adaptive immune systems. A major focus surrounds impacts of influenza vaccines on bacterial pathogenicity and transmission. Work on this has recently moved into human trials through collaborations with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Additionally, his work on non-specific vaccine effects led to the discovery that measles infections may cause “immunologic-amnesia”, leaving children at risk of infections for multiple years. He found that by preventing measles, measles vaccines may have had significant though previously unrecognized benefits, reducing non-measles childhood infectious disease mortality by as much as 50%. |
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