South Africa
The University of Venda (UV) is located in Thohoyandou, Limpopo Province. The university mainly caters to previously disadvantaged students, most of whom are from low socio-economic backgrounds. The guiding principle of UV is to use limited resources to address community problems.
The Department of Microbiology at UV has been characterizing prevalent and circulating HIV-1 isolates in Limpopo Province. Specifically, researchers have been looking at HIV-1 subtype distribution and phylogenetic relationships, inter-subtype recombinants, biological phenotypes such as coreceptor usage and syncytium induction, and genetic drug resistance to protease and reverse transcriptase inhibitors (PIs and RTIs) in drug-naïve HIV-positive individuals.
Thus far, researchers have determined that HIV-1 subtype C is the predominant circulating variant of the R5 biotype. Furthermore, classical mutations associated with resistance to PIs and RTIs appear to be rare, though polymorphisms associated with resistance exist. Within current HIV/AIDS research, researchers have initiated the evaluation of selected medicinal plants for inhibitory activities against HIV-1 reverse transcriptase and integrase.
The Department is also investigating the microbial quality of water sources, and cryptosporidiosis in Venda communities. The background to the microbial assessment of water sources in Limpopo Province is based on the fact that the province is predominantly rural and one of the poorest in the country. As a result, many communities do not have access to treated and potable water, and hence make use of rivers, springs, wells as water sources for drinking and other domestic purposes without prior treatment. In addition, sanitation and environmental conditions are optimal for the transmission of Cryptosporidium. Thus, the Department is assessing the scope of enteropathogens in untreated water sources used by several rural communities. Diarrhoeagenic bacterial isolates are correlated with diarrhoeal cases in defined study cohorts. Some of these water sources have been shown to be unfit for human consumption due to the presence of indicator organisms in quantities above the minimum requirements for safe drinking water, as well as the isolation of Vibrio spp and the detection of genes encoding for enterotoxigenic, enteropathogenic and enteroaggregative Escherichia coli. Other potential diarrhoeagenic agents such as Aeromonas, Campylobacter, Plesiomonas, Salmonella, Shigella and various strains of rotaviruses have been isolated from almost all the water sources. On the other hand, preliminary data indicates that infection with Cryptosporidium, a common cause of diarrhea in young children and the immunocompromised, and not routinely examined in diarrheal cases in Venda, may be common among young children in this part of South Africa.
Extending longstanding ties with a premier collaboration in environmental sciences, Dr. Guerrant conducted a site visit of the traditional homeland University of Venda in November 2003 with Professors Hank Shugart and Robert Swap from UVa's Department of Environmental Sciences. There he met with Dean Sophie Mahoko, Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor C. Larry Obi, former Chair of Microbiology to identify outstanding young scholars for postdoctoral training at UVa. The group also visited three major hospitals and three community sites to which UVa CGH scholars were going to launch pilot clinical studies. Most importantly, they interviewed Dr. Pascal Bessong, an outstanding GIDRT fellow candidate for further training in genetic research already in the tentative planning stage. At that time Dr. Bessong had already published on HIV molecular epidemiology and enteric microbiology, making him an ideal candidate to launch further genetic studies and our collaborations there. His successful CGH fellowship and re-entry to Univen has established a foundation for additional CGH fellows from Univen, viz Mr. Samie Amidou and Mr. Edgar Musie, current CGH fellows. Dr Pascal Bessong is currently leading the AIDS Virus Research Program in the Department of Microbiology, Univen.