This discovery furthers our understanding of how Borrelia burgdorferi causes inflammation and disease, said Mari Davis, who is the lead author on the paper, a former master s graduate of the Jutras lab in the Department of Biochemistry in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. It is a testament to how unique that this bacterium is and how we need to keep working to understand more about what is going on behind the scenes in order to develop future diagnostics and treatments.
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In recent months, far less attention has been paid to another widespread problem that has been proliferating since the late 1970s: Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is the most reported vector-borne disease in the country. Over the past 20 years, the United States has experienced a dramatic increase in both the number of reported cases and the geographic distribution of the disease.
In Virginia, the disease is transmitted by blacklegged ticks, which are infected with the Lyme disease-causing bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi.
Virginia Tech Assistant Professor Brandon Jutras and his lab have continued to tackle the Lyme disease epidemic over the past year, and they have recently identified another missing piece of the Lyme disease puzzle, the university announced in a news release.
Comments Off on Salt Pollution Threatens Human Water Security
BLACKSBURG, Virginia, April 22, 2021 (ENS) – “Inland freshwater salt pollution is rising nationwide and worldwide, and we investigated the potential conflict between managing freshwater salt pollution and the sustainable practice of increasing water supply through the addition of highly treated wastewater to surface waters and groundwaters,” said Stanley Grant, professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering.
“If we don’t figure out how to reverse this trend of salt pollution soon, it may become one of our nation’s top environmental challenges.” Grant and his collaborators have published their findings in the journal “Nature Sustainability.”
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IMAGE: Image of the Bull Run River that feeds the Occoquan Reservoir, an important source of water supply to Fairfax Water, a water utility serving about 2 million people in Northern. view more
Credit: Virginia Tech
Water touches virtually every aspect of human society, and all life on earth requires it. Yet, fresh, clean water is becoming increasingly scarce one in eight people on the planet lack access to clean water. Drivers of freshwater salt pollution such as de-icers on roads and parking lots, water softeners, and wastewater and industrial discharges further threaten freshwater ecosystem health and human water security.