In parts of South Texas, if you breathe in dust, you might also breathe in a fungus called coccidioidomycosis. Have you heard of Valley fever? That's how you get it. For most people, Valley fever causes a temporary, flu-like illness, with the eponymous fever, as well as cough, fatigue, headache, and muscle aches. But for some people, coccidioidomycosis can cause a chronic infection. "It can become meningitis," according to UT Health San Antonio infectious diseases specialist Dr. Barbara Taylor. "It can be devastating."
Valley fever is among the debilitating illnesses that will be the focus of the University of Texas at San Antonio's new Center for Chronic Infectious Diseases. Taylor is the center's founding director.
"The mission of our center is ambitious," Taylor explained. "Our goal is to work in partnership with our community to conduct transformational research to end chronic infectious diseases that disproportionately impact South Texas."
Chronic infections are those that linger, typically lasting at least three weeks and often much longer. Tuberculosis, HIV, Long COVID, syphilis, and endemic fungal infections like Valley Fever are among those that the center will target.
Taylor wants to build a research hub that will act as a magnet for the best and brightest minds in infectious diseases to San Antonio to collaborate on the study of these diseases and the development of new therapeutics that will address health challenges facing South Texans and inform care globally.
"We want to be a place where people or institutions who are interested in developing vaccines, prevention, and treatments for these illnesses can come and know that we will do excellent work to run a clinical trial for them," Taylor said.
The idea for the center was conceived and developed over the last five years through collaborations in which UT Health San Antonio experts participated to better understand COVID-19 and long COVID. "So we've been doing this for a while," Taylor continued. "The center, in some ways, is a naming and a gathering of the research expertise that we already have, but also it allows us to do more gathering."
The chronic infections on which the center will focus need the kind of attention Taylor plans to provide. "We should have better tools, and we should have better ways to make sure that our community is not disproportionately impacted by these illnesses," Taylor explained. "So the center deeply aligns with my personal mission to bring people together to move towards that common goal because I think we don't get there on our own," adding that this kind of work is a team sport.
"So we hope that the center becomes a place where people can gather, work together, be innovative, be community responsive," she said, "To really have an impact in South Texas, to reduce suffering and to improve the lives of our community."
Science & Medicine is a collaboration between TPR and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, about how scientific discovery in San Antonio advances the way medicine is practiced everywhere.
