The American population is aging, and conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease are on the rise. With those factors in place, the medical community has growing concerns about wound treatment. According to the American Professional Wound Care Association, about 15 percent of Medicare recipients suffer chronic, nonhealing wounds at… Read more
bacteria
NAU disease ecologist receives $2.25 million grant to study potential biological warfare agent
Francisella tularensis is one of the most infectious pathogenic bacteria known to science—so virulent, in fact, that it is considered a serious potential bioterrorist threat. Humans can contract respiratory tularemia—a rare and deadly disease—by inhaling as few as 10 airborne organisms.
Northern Arizona University professor David Wagner, director of the Pathogen and Microbiome Institute’s (PMI) Biodefense and Disease… Read more
NAU researchers join Department of Energy project to study the soil microbiome and its effect on carbon persistence
The Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and biosphere are huge reservoirs of carbon, and all play a critical role in global carbon cycling. Soil is one of the largest carbon pools on the planet, storing more carbon than the atmosphere and biosphere combined, yet scientists aren’t sure what regulates carbon persistence—the amount of carbon that remains in the soil.
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National… Read more
Funded by $21.4 million grant, new NAU research center will address health disparities across Southwest
A region of vast expanses and unparalleled natural beauty, the southwestern United States is a land of harsh socioeconomic realities for many, especially for underserved Native American and Hispanic populations. The Southwest has some of the highest poverty rates in the country, some of the lowest rates of health care access and a widespread incidence of serious chronic diseases, infectious diseases and… Read more
NAU scientists urge further study of ‘the beasts in all of us’—colonizing opportunistic pathogens
A new paper published in PLOS Pathogens by a team of researchers comprised of Bruce Hungate and Ben Koch from Northern Arizona University; Lance Price from George Washington University and the Translational Genomics Research Institute; and Gregg Davis and Cindy Liu from George Washington University outlines the critical need for further research into the nature of colonizing opportunistic pathogens, or COPs.
Since the National Institutes… Read more