Diarrhoea-diagnosis study

Press, 11 July 1989, Page 21

Diarrhoea-diagnosis study

Combining genetic-engineer-ing techniques with clinical and microbiological expertise, a British doctor hopes to speed up the diagnosis of a major cause of diarrhoea in humans from several days to a matter of hours. Dr Peter Williams, from the genetics department at Leicester University, the London Press Service reports, has been given $450,000 backing by the European Commission to coordinate research into the Campylobacter organism which presents a serious problem in many countries. “The work therefore will have great significance in the Third World, where diarrhoea is a severely debilitating and often life-threatening disease,” Dr Williams says. “But even in developed countries, where

death is a far less common result, diarrhoea has a massive effect in purely economic terms — in working days lost, for example. “Whereas Salmonella infection is usually more dramatic and therefore relatively easily identified and treated, Campylobacter can have much more long-term and more damaging effects.” The new research will involve a team of three or four at Leicester University, scientists and clinicians at the Institute for Child Health in Birmingham and at the World Health Organisation’s collaborating centre for Campylobacter at St Peter’s Hospital in Brussels. Campylobacter is the organism most frequently isolated in cases of diarrhoea, outnumbering even Salmonella.