# GH20-005, Conducting Integrated Infectious Disease and Public Health Research in Peru

> **NIH ALLCDC U01** · UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA · 2021 · $250,000

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY:
The proposed application aims to overcome diagnostic barriers in the etiologic diagnosis of endemic and
epidemic causes of acute febrile illness (AFI) by moving efficient state of the art diagnostics to an area of high
endemicity. The long-term goal of this research is to understand the etiology of AFI across diverse contexts in
South America and contribute to global strategies that improve etiology-specific disease estimates to inform
public health practice and policy. The central hypothesis is that the technology transfer and implementation of
improved diagnostics will enhance regional diagnostic capacity, epidemic responsiveness, and translation of
research findings to practice maximizing the public health impact of research findings. The rationale for the
research is that the documented feasibility of this approach will enable a full and appropriate evaluation for
uptake by regional and national stakeholders. The goals of the research will be achieved through the execution
of three specific aims: 1) Establish stable year round acute febrile illness surveillance using the TaqMan array
card, which simultaneously detects over 30 pathogens of AFI across three epidemiologic contexts in Loreto,
Peru; urban, riverine with extensive sylvatic exposure, and agricultural riverine context along the three country
border (Peru, Brazil, and Colombia) in order to capture the diversity of pathogens causing AFI in Peru over a
four year period; 2) Integrate this diagnostic platform into the regional outbreak response to determine the
etiology of epidemics of acute febrile illness and validating improved storage and transport procedures; and 3)
Develop and evaluate novel serodiagnostic chip to enable single platform serologic assessment and downstream
point of care tests and focused diagnostics for pathogens of high prevalence and importance. The global control
of emerging infectious diseases will be improved only as the areas that are not reached and included effectively
in surveillance shrink and the proposed project attempts to implement a strategy to make all populations
reachable to the improved diagnostics. The complexity of current diagnostic strategies is a critical barrier to the
timely regional ascertainment of the etiology of most cases of acute febrile illnesses and this has important
regional and global public health implications as undiagnosed AFI allows for the widespread dissemination of
emerging diseases as effective disease control measures are based on accurate etiologic assessment. The plan
is innovative because of the meaningful integration of highly select local researchers, educators, trainees, and
policymakers. The implementation of the research strategy will be significant because it is expected to contribute
to the accuracy of etiologic assessment of endemic and epidemic etiologies of AFI in an area of documented
diversity of vector-borne and zoonotic agents and serve as a model for enabling local diagnostic and reporti...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10259643
- **Project number:** 5U01GH002270-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Margaret N Kosek
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $250,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-09-30 → 2025-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10259643

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10259643, GH20-005, Conducting Integrated Infectious Disease and Public Health Research in Peru (5U01GH002270-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10259643. Licensed CC0.

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