Sites - Brazil
Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA)
Institute:
Universidade Federal da Bahia.
Host Investigator:
Dr. Edgar Carvalho
UC Berkeley Investigator:
Dr. Lee W. Riley is a Professor of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases in the School of Public Health. The Riley group focuses on three general areas: I) basic biology of infectious disease pathogenesis, II) epidemiology of drug-resistant infectious diseases, and III) global health focused on infectious diseases of urban slums. Knowledge gained from each of the research areas is used to generate databases and reagents that can be used as research tools. All of these projects focus on infectious diseases of global importance, such as tuberculosis, E. coli, and leptospirosis.
The Riley lab has been involved in collaborative projects in Brazil since 1990, focused on infectious diseases of importance to urban centers of Brazil. More recently, the collaboration has begun to focus on chronic infectious diseases of urban slums (favelas). One project in Salvador studies the risk factors and natural history of leptospirosis for 9 years in one favela of a population of 58,000, which has led to the identification of a protein made by the bacterium that causes leptospirosis.