A Nature news story shines a spotlight on the increase in infectious diseases associated with the opioid epidemic while highlighting the work of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, RTI International, and Emory University.

• A team at UNC-Chapel Hill, including Cecilia Thompson, PhD, MS, MLS(ASCP), is sequencing DNA from heart valves removed during heart valve replacement surgery. This study is ongoing, but in results presented at the American Society for Microbiology meeting, the team has found that valves from people who have injected drugs were more likely to be infected with Staphylococcus aureus, a type of bacteria that is often resistant to antibiotics, than the valves of others.
• In addition to the increase in cases of infectious diseases, the pattern of drug-related outbreaks is different. These differences render older infectious disease models useless when looking at drug-related outbreaks. Georgiy Bobashev, PhD, a data scientist at RTI International, and colleagues have developed a computer model that can be used to predict the location of opioid-related outbreaks of HIV.
• Carlos Del Rio, MD, from Emory University, is leading a working group of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that is developing a strategy to promote integrated programs addressing opioid and infectious disease epidemics.

NC TraCS Institute, the integrated hub of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program at UNC-Chapel Hill, combines the research strengths, resources and opportunities of the UNC-Chapel Hill campus and our partners RTI International in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, and North Carolina State University in Raleigh. We educate, fund, connect and support research teams. Together we are strategically designed to overcome barriers that historically have been responsible for fragmenting and delaying research efforts.

Emory University is part of the Georgia Clinical & Translational Science Alliance.