̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Emma Glennon

Women in STEM: Emma Glennon

sc604 — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 06:00:00 +0000

I try to understand how and why new diseases emerge. As cities grow and climates change, new and poorly-understood diseases are causing outbreaks more and more frequently. I build models to help understand how this happens, from how zoonotic diseases – that is, diseases that ‘jump’ from animals to people – circulate in wildlife to how we can detect rare viruses once they make that jump into people. This work is sometimes theoretical but sometimes directly applicable to public health; next month I expect to be deployed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to work as an epidemiologist on the Ebola outbreak response.

I do primarily computational work, so most days I code and run simulations and write. However, to get to know more of my (very interdisciplinary) team and understand the data I use, I also went to Australia for fieldwork last year. While there, my work looked completely different: I caught bats, collected samples, and climbed a few trees to try to find out what they were eating. Catching bats requires such obscure skills as stringing up flag poles, detangling claws from nets, writing labels in the dark, and feeling vibrations through strings from impacts 20 meters away. I also had a few too many close encounters with spiders the size of my fist.

My hope is that eventually we will understand how to better prevent, detect, and stop outbreaks. Once these sorts of diseases start spreading among people--as we’ve seen in recent years with Ebola--outbreaks can get out of control quickly. Prevention can take a number of forms, including changing how we interact with our environments to protect the health of wildlife and developing health capacity to make sure we notice an outbreak as soon as it starts.

One of my favourite parts of doing a PhD here has been the freedom to do pursue truly interdisciplinary and international work. I’ve learned about my own field in a deep way, but I’ve also been able to learn from collaborators in ecology, virology, computer science, and anthropology, and I think my work is much better for it.

Be stubborn and support other women. There are real frustrations with being a woman in STEM, but in my experience it's easier to get through them if you stand up for what you're passionate about, what you're good at, and where you want to go. And if you are successful, please support other women trying to do the same! Being part of supportive circles of women and LGBTQ+ scientists has been invaluable to me, and I hope one day I get to help make the road a little smoother for others.

Emma Glennon is a PhD candidate in the Department of Veterinary Medicine and a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Here, she tells us about her research on infectious disease and how they emerge, the importance of interdisciplinary work, and learning how to catch bats.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Half of Ebola outbreaks go undetected, study finds

ta385 — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 09:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��research, led by Emma Glennon from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, is the first to estimate the number of undetected Ebola outbreaks. Although these tend to involve clusters of fewer than five people, they could represent well over one hundred patient cases in total.

̽��ֱ��study, published today in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, found that the chance of detecting an isolated case of Ebola was less than 10%.

Glennon, a Gates Cambridge Scholar, says: “Most times that Ebola has jumped from wildlife to people, this spillover event hasn’t been detected. Often these initial cases don’t infect anyone else but being able to find and control them locally is crucial because you never know which of these events will grow into full outbreaks.”

"We rarely find Ebola outbreaks while they are still easy to manage. ̽��ֱ��unfolding epidemic in the DRC demonstrates how difficult it is to stop the disease once it has got out of control, even with international intervention. But if an outbreak is detected early enough, we can prevent it spreading with targeted, low-tech interventions, such as isolating infected people and their contacts.”

̽��ֱ��scientists used three independent datasets from the 2013–16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa to simulate thousands of outbreaks. From these simulations, they worked out how often they would expect a spillover event to fizzle out early versus how often they would expect to see it progress into a true outbreak. This allowed the team to draw comparisons with reported outbreak sizes and estimate detection rates of clusters of different sizes.

Glennon says: “Most doctors and public health workers have never seen a single Ebola case and severe fever can easily be misdiagnosed as the symptom of malaria, typhoid or yellow fever. To limit outbreaks at their source, we need to invest much more to increase local capacity to diagnose and contain Ebola and these more common fevers.

"We must make sure every local clinic has basic public health and infection control resources. International outbreak responses are important but they are often slow, complicated and expensive.”

Reference:

Glennon, E.E., Jephcott, F.L., Restif, O., Wood, J.L.N. ‘Estimating undetected Ebola spillovers’. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2019). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0007428

Half of Ebola outbreaks have gone undetected since the virus was discovered in 1976, scientists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge estimate. ̽��ֱ��new findings come amid rising concern about Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and highlight the need for improved detection and rapid response to avoid future epidemics.

We rarely find Ebola outbreaks while they are still easy to manage

Emma Glennon

UN Photo/Martine Perret

Burial team in Guinea carry a victim of Ebola, 2015.

Funding

Gates-Cambridge Trust (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [OPP1144]), the ALBORADA Trust, the Medical Research Council (MR/P025226/1).

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Massive projected increase in use of antimicrobials in animals could lead to widespread antimicrobial resistance in humans

sc604 — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 18:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from ETH Zürich, Princeton, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, conducted the first global assessment of different intervention policies that could help limit the projected increase of antimicrobial use in food production. Their results, reported in the journal Science, represent an alarming revision from already pessimistic estimates made in 2010, pushed up mostly by recent reports of high antimicrobial use in animals in China.

In modern animal farming, large quantities of antimicrobials are used for disease prevention and for growth promotion. “Worldwide, animals receive almost triple the amount of antibiotics that people do, although much of this use is not medically necessary, and many new strains of antibiotic-resistant infections are now common in people after originating in our livestock,” said co-author Emma Glennon, a Gates Scholar and PhD student at Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “As global demand for meat grows and agriculture continues to transition from extensive farming and smallholdings to more intensive practices, the use of antimicrobials in food production will increasingly threaten the efficacy of these life-saving drugs.”

Global policies based on a user fee and stricter regulation could help mitigate those ominous projections. “Under a user fee policy, the billions of dollars raised in revenues could be invested in the development of new antimicrobial compounds, or put towards improving farm hygiene around the world to reduce the need for antibiotics, in particular in low- and middle-income countries,” said Dr Thomas Van Boeckel from ETH Zurich, the study’s first author.

Compared to a business as usual scenario, a global regulation putting a cap of 50 mg of antimicrobials per kilogram of animal per year in OECD countries could reduce global consumption by 60% without affecting livestock-related economic development in low-income countries.

However, such a policy may be challenging to enforce in resource-limited settings. An alternative solution could be to impose a user fee of 50% of the current price on veterinary antimicrobials: this could reduce global consumption by 31% and generate yearly revenues of between US$ 1.7 and 4.6 billion.

An important limiting factor in performing this global assessment was accessing sufficient data on veterinary antimicrobial sales volumes and prices. ̽��ֱ��present study is based on publicly available data, limited to 37 countries. Representatives from the animal health industry were approach for this study but all declined to share information on antimicrobial sales or prices.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the program for Adaptation to a Changing Environment, the ETH postdoctoral fellowship program and the European Research Council.

Reference:
Thomas P. Van Boeckel et al. ‘Reducing global antimicrobial use in food animals.’ Science (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao1495

Adapted from at ETH Zurich press release.

̽��ֱ��amount of antimicrobials given to animals destined for human consumption is expected to rise by a staggering 52% and reach 200,000 tonnes by 2030 unless policies are implemented to limit their use, according to new research.

Worldwide, animals receive almost triple the amount of antibiotics that people do.

Emma Glennon

Marcelo Braga

Expresso Porco

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution