ASTMH Annual Meeting Blog

Learn more about Dr. Rabinovich and read her vision for the Society in 2018.

Watch the recorded webcast of this year's Magill Symposium that took place during the 2017 Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD.

Boris Stripen, PhD, received the 2017 William Trager Award for Basic Parasitology. The award, established in 2015 by the ACMCIP, recognizes a fundamental breakthrough in molecular, cellular or immunoparasitology. 

Researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital, PATH, Tel Aviv University, and the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine joined together at ASTMH to share the state of the science on immune responses to cholera, Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC), Shigella, and Salmonella Typhi (S. Typhi).

Combining a vaccine that is at least 50 percent efficacious with “optimal implementation of existing treatment and prevention modalities” could end the HIV/AIDS epidemic, said Anthony S. Fauci, MD, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in a plenary address Thursday at TropMed2017

Malaria, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and more—what if we could use something as simple as the phones we carry in our pockets to tell us when and where the risk for transmission of these dangerous diseases is highest? Written by Megan Harris of SUNY Upstate Medical University, who is attending TropMed17 as Benjamin H. Kean Travel Fellow in Tropical Medicine.

I count today as a “win” in terms of finding great sessions to attend: I was able to balance novelty and familiarity of topics in a way that was entirely satisfying. I attended a session on HIV and tropical co-infections, a topic that I have some background in. It was a great session to attend, as the speakers provided insightful examinations into risk factors of HIV that were very different from what I’ve heard before, writes by Mandy Izzo, Sr. Science Writer for the Institute for Disease Modeling

While efforts to control malaria have historically focused on children under five years old and pregnant women, little is known about the prevalence and impacts of malaria in older children.  Yet, researchers at the University of Maryland who work in Africa have found that school age children actually have the highest burden of malaria. 

Researchers at Stanford University are calling on citizens around the world to join in Abuzz, a citizen science intiative to track mosquitoes and help prevent the spread of disease.
 

Rising rates of antimicrobial resistance have made typhoid fever “essentially an untreatable disease” in parts of the world where broad spectrum treatments are inaccessible, said Dr. Kathleen Neuzil of the University of Maryland School of Medicine at a session at TropMed17. However, the fight against typhoid fever has recently gained a new weapon, the Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine (TCV).

When the director of a powerful new documentary on the horrific global burden of snakebite sat down Tuesday night at TropMed17 for the American premiere of his film, he didn't have to look far for a timely example to include in his introductory remarks for “Minutes to Die.” 

For some people outside of the United States, their desire to visit America is aroused by an encounter with a beloved movie, book or pop singer. It was different for Sudan’s Ayman Ahmed. For him, it was all about arboviruses. More specifically, it was his desire to join the American Committee on Arthropod-Borne Viruses and sit in on presentations by committee members at TropMed17.

Five Iraqi colleagues invited to the 2017 Annual Meeting discuss the importance of establishing a dialogue with their science and medical peers

Read the key impressions lshared by a panel of Iraqi health professionals who traveled to TropMed17 to discuss the issues encountered today in their country’s healthcare facilities, medical education institutions and public health programs. 

Mandy Izzo, Senior Science Writer for the Institute for Disease Modelinga, note that "a couple of days into ASTMH, I’m starting to realize that one of the most challenging aspects of attending a conference this large is deciding which sessions to attend."

Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Division of Malaria Research have employed microarray technology as a tool to identify key serological markers of malaria exposure, offering the potential to radically improve our ability to assess human reservoirs of malaria transmission.

"Science is Real: Climate Change Impacts on Vector Borne-Diseases” offered solid proof Tuesday that not only is climate science real, the science of predicting the impact of climate change on diseases like malaria, dengue, chikungunya and Zika is a complex undertaking.
 

While tools available at the time were inadequate for predicting the 2015 Zika (ZIKV) outbreak,   a new seasonal forecasting system now available to researchers probably could have detected warning signs of an impending epidemic, according to a presentation on Monday at TropMed17. This blog was written by Paris Hantzidiamantis, SUNY Upstate Medical University, who is attending #TropMed17 as Benjamin H. Kean Travel Fellow in Tropical Medicine. 

New findings were presented Monday at TropMed17 on the spread and evolution of Mayaro virus (MAYV), an arbovirus transmitted by the Haemagogus mosquito and causative agent of Mayaro Fever. Read the post by Catherine Castro, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, who is attending #TropMed17 as a  Benjamin H. Kean Travel Fellow in Tropical Medicine. 
 
 

Efforts are being made to develop vaccines against a major contributor of stillbirths and infant deaths around the world: Group B Streptococcus (GBS). Written by Monalisa Hassan of Wake Forest University School of Medicine, who is attending #TropMed17 as a Benjamin H. Kean Travel Fellow in Tropical Medicine. 

​Farm workers in Central America who are involved in weed or pest control, encounter rodents regularly, or drink or wash their hands with drainage ditch water may be at greater risk of suffering a puzzling kidney disease that has killed more than 20,000 people in Central America, according to a presentation Monday at #TropMed17.

Mandy Izzo, Sr. Science Writer for the Institute for Disease Modeling, offers impressions from attending  her first ASTMH Annual Meeting.

Another Packed House Honors Alan Magill by Turning out to Support Malaria EradicationThe second annual Alan Magill Symposium on Malaria Eradication took place Monday afternoon at #TropMed17, and in a testament to the enduring popularity of the late ASTMH Past President, who died unexpectedly in 2015,  and the intense interest in malaria eradication, a cavernous ballroom was once again packed with a standing-room only crowd.

ASTMH leaders – many of whom have relationships within the U.K. to help foster the Society's mission – joined past Donald Mackay Medal winners for lunch Monday and celebrated the longstanding partnership between ASTMH and the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

A safe and effective drug that has dramatically reduced incidence of blindness caused by the parasitic disease onchocerciasis also could help eliminate debilitating and sometimes deadly forms of epilepsy that are increasingly linked to the same infection, according to a presentation on Monday at #TropMed17.
 

Outbreaks of infectious diseases often invite such a sharp focus on the biology of the pathogen and the need to develop new drugs and vaccines that even many experts lose sight of the fact that it’s a lack of health equity that routinely inflicts most of the suffering.

TropMed 2017 officially gets underway today, but for Scientific Program Chair Daniel G. Bausch, MD, MPH&TM, FASTMH, it’s a year-long effort to put together an informative and enriching experience for the approximately 4,400 attendees from around the world who are descending on Baltimore’s historic Inner Harbor. We asked Dan to give us a quick “pick 6” that offers just a few of the many highlights from this year’s installment of the ASTMH Annual Meeting.