Saturday, June 27, 2009

My nerdiness is showing...

I can't help myself...I'm a big nerd at heart. Last Thursday I inadvertently found some very exciting items. I realize most people probably don't find my purchases/findings as awesome as I do, but I KNOW that there are a few people who will. So here you go:

I decided to pop into a bookstore while running errands and I happened upon a Microbiology coloring book! The cover (pictured below) depicts Koch's postulates and the book covers everything from fungi life cycles to ELISA's! It will definitely be making an appearance at ID study groups this fall...

After my exciting find at the book store, I went grocery shopping. Later that night I noticed something strange on a grocery bag that I had left on my table. The bag had pictures of boobs on it! I was a little disconcerted until I realized that my grocery bag had a step by step guide to do a self breast exam! I guess it's a logical place to put a public health message, seeing as how women typically buy food for their households. I give big creativity points for whoever thought of that one.

I'll post about something more relevant (ie a research update) later this week! Beijos!

Friday, June 26, 2009

I really need to update this more frequently...

I haven’t been very good about updating this blog so this will be a long entry, don’t worry there are pictures…

Natal

I didn’t have to work most of this week thanks to the festival of São João. Actually, I thought I had the whole week off until I got a text at 7:30 Thursday morning from Sergio saying he was at my apt to pick me up for work! Anywyas, the fun São João parties apparently happen in the interior of Bahia but none of my friends had plans to go! I couldn’t waste a perfectly good (partial) week off so I booked a flight to go visit Pooja in Natal for a long weekend. Pooja and I have been friends since freshman year at Northwestern. She just finished her first year of med school at Iowa and is spending her summer doing research or visceral leishmaniasis in Natal.

I got in on Friday night, went straight to a Forro (a traditional northeastern dance), drank a few too many caipirinhas and stayed up most of the night catching up on life with Pooja. It was an excellent evening!

Along with three other med students, we spent Saturday and Sunday in a cute vacation town called Pipa, about an hour and a half outside of Natal. There were fun shops, fantastic restaurants and beautiful beaches… it was a wonderful change of pace from the very urban Salvador! I took a surfing lesson on Sunday and despite my sore muscles and a few bruises, I’m hooked! I was able to stand on the board and ride into the shore twice! The waves in Salvador are great so I’m hoping I can continue to learn how to surf here!

A view of the beach we learned to surf at
Our boards
The walk to the beach
Our hostel

I spent Monday and Tuesday working with the team of med students on their visceral leishmaniasis project. We drove out to rural towns outside of Natal, gave questionnaires and physical exams to former VL cases and their family members. Pooja and her roommate Alex taught me how to take a patient’s blood pressure and explained all of the parts of their physical exam to me. I got to help administer their questionnaire, which was great experience since my own project has a questionnaire component! I made myself useful by teaching them Epi Info (a data entry/analysis program) and by rambling on about biostats and epi…I was in nerd heaven ☺

Aside from fieldwork, we managed to stuff ourselves nightly with delicious seafood, walk around the boardwalk and explore Natal. I somehow managed to forget to take pictures of people in Natal (thankfully Pooja has some which means they’ll be on facebook by 2012), but I’ve put some pictures of the beaches in Natal below. It’s a really lovely, low-key city. I really liked it, although I was happy to return to the very urban Salvador (I am a city girl at heart).

The beach in Natal
The boardwalk in Natal

Research:
I still have no antigen. Long story short, there’s some Brazilian import law that states that you can’t bring anything into Brazil that is kept cold for any reason (I think I have that right…), even if it’s for research! What a ridiculous law! Apparently the head of all of Fiocruz from Rio is meeting with the head of ANVISA (the people who enforce health surveillance) and there’s some talk of trying to get the law changed.

The antigen is also being tested back in the US at SF General. They ran the mce1A test and the existing quantiferon (QFT) test on four cases of active TB. There was no cytokine response in any of the four patients, which indicates that something was wrong with the peptides themselves, the buffer, the blood sample, etc. Dr. Riley’s people in the US are troubleshooting and hopefully we’ll have new and improved peptide by the end of July (when Dr. Riley comes to Salvador with more antigen).

Since I won’t actually be starting the mce1A project until late July, I’ll be working on a couple other TB projects in the mean time. I’m pretty sure I’ll be running QFT’s of people who stopped latent TB treatment and working on follow-up study looking for people who enrolled but didn’t finish a latent TB treatment study. I’m pretty excited about both projects! I’ve spent the last couple weeks (when we didn’t have holidays) working on an NIH grant to help fund the mce1A project. While not the most exciting of jobs, it’s been a good experience to learn about some of the components that go into grant writing.

Life in Salvador:

I really need to update this blog more often…I’m starting to forget things I’ve done! Salvador is starting to feel more like home and less like I’m on a long vacation where I also happen to be doing work. I finally figured out how to turn on my oven (without blowing up my apartment)!
A week or so ago I spent the day exploring Pelourinho, a historic neighborhood with lots of churches and brightly colored houses. Pelourinho was nice but very touristy! I got a tour guide to tell me all about the churches and buildings and ate some delicious Baihan food. My next goal is to find a place to rent surfboards and perhaps get another lesson...and my cousin Michaela arrives tomorrow for a volunteer program in Salvador! Yay!!!
The view from of Modelo Mercado from Pelourinho
Painted houses in Pelourinho
Sao Francisco Church

Monday, June 8, 2009

Getting Settled

Research
I couldn’t start my project this past week because my antigen is STILL being held hostage by customs. Despite having people from the lab calling pretty much daily, the antigen won’t be released until the people at customs call the capital, Brasilia, to see if our visa got approved. Apparently that’s not a huge priority for customs since they haven’t called yet. I’m moving on from just crossing my fingers to crossing both my fingers and toes…I’d really like to start doing work!

So I’ve been asked the question “what is this antigen and why is it so important?” a few times last week and I realized I’ve never really explained the role of this antigen in my project (or what it is for that matter). The goal of this project is to determine if a new diagnostic test for TB is able to a)diagnose TB and, more importantly, b)differentiate latent and active TB. The test works the same way as an existing TB test called QuantiFERON (QFT). Blood from a patient is incubated in an antigen from TB, the plasma is harvested and we run an ELISA to determine the amount of the cytokine gamma interferon produced. The amount of gamma interferon produced tells us if the person has TB and, hopefully whether they have latent or active infection. The new test uses different antigen than QFT. The antigen is a peptide (in this case 2 peptides) that are thought to be differentially expressed by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, depending on whether or not a person is latently infected or if they have active disease. The patient’s blood must be incubated in the antigen within ~1 hour after being drawn, so clearly I can’t start recruiting patients until customs frees the antigen!

Since I have no antigen and the rest of the prep work is done for this project, I’ve had a pretty boring work week. I passed a biosecurity class (consisting of LOTS of online quizzes in Portuguese) and spent the rest of the week trying to get people to take me up on the offer to help them with their work…no one took me up on that offer…Good new though, thanks to the biosecurity class I now know all about how to dispose of nuclear waste and genetically modified organisms properly…it was quite the comprehensive class! The first couple weeks are going to be an awkward transition and I’m really looking forward to starting research!

Life
I’m still working on getting adjusted to life in Salvador. My Portuguese is getting noticeably better (I think) and I’m slowly learning more about my neighborhood, Barra, and the rest of the city.

The food in Salvador is EXCELLENT! I usually have no idea what I’m eating, all I know is that I like it! There are a bunch of pay-by-the-kilo buffet places…these are going to get me in trouble…I always put too much food on the plate, eat it all, and then feel a little sick afterwards from eating so much. My only bad food experience was at a concert on Friday night. Federico was eating something that was blue/purple-ish and offered me a piece. It was really salty and pretty gross. I later found out it was cow spleen! I’m glad I have my own, but I don’t think I’ll be eating other animals’ spleens again. On a better food related note, I’ve become obsessed with açaí na tigela. This delicious smoothie-esque concoction is açaí berry blended with some sugar (I think…and maybe some orange juice?) and topped with bananas and granola. It’s a little cup of purple heaven.

I went to a concert Friday night with Federico and some of his friends. We saw Caetano Veloso a singer who, according to Wikipedia, is the “Bob Dylan of Brazil.” I really liked him! Everyone was really great, although I think learning some Brazilian pop culture will help me fit in. There’s a novela (soap opera) about India and it was ALL that some people were talking about. I need to watch this show!

On Saturday I found a crafty, slightly touristy market this weekend! I haggled the price for a lovely yellow hammock! I love it but can’t find a place to put it up in my apartment. No worries, I fully intend on taking naps in it this fall! I’ll post a picture later.

Aside from my continuing problems with customs, life in Salvador is going well. It’s been a huge adjustment living in a country where I don’t know anyone and am still learning the language. That being said, I’m slowly making some friends and I’m sure in another couple weeks I’ll feel right at home.

When I’m at my apartment I’m usually on skype and would love to talk! My skype name is megalt512.

Hope everyone’s summers are going well! Tchau!