Download the full paper below: Abstract Bacterial healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a substantial source of global morbidity and mortality. The estimated cost associated with HAIs ranges from $35 to $45 billion in the USA alone. The costs and accessibility of whole genome sequencing (WGS) of bacteria and the lack of sufficiently accurate, high-resolution, scalable and accessible analysis for strain identification are being addressed. Thus, it is timely to determine

Presented by James Littlefair at ECCMID in Copenhagen, 2023 Download high-resolution pdf below: At ECCMID 2023 in Copenhagen, we displayed some of the findings regarding our near-zero error capabilities generated from our platform which will be launched commercially this summer. Calling Zero: A new foundation for diagnostic bacterial genomics James C. Littlefair, Benedict J. Uttley, Dan G. Frampton, Gareth M. Linsmith, John F. Peden, & Nigel J. Saunders Reference ECCMID

Download high-resolution pdf below: A Novel Multi-Scale Outbreak Detection and Strain Identification Capability for Genome Sequence-Based Infection Control: An MRSA Example. J. C. Littlefair, B. Uttley, D. Frampton, J. F. Peden, N. J. Saunders The exclusion (as well as inclusion) of strains is vital for outbreak investigation and infection prevention and control of healthcare-associated infection, for both health resource management and patient-care. Current genome-sequence b

At one level, the numbers look good, but if you look again, maybe not. Once upon a time, TB started out as something else, probably some environmental predecessor that lived in watery or other environments, perhaps starting out in another animal, but eventually, it got to humans. There was a ‘patient zero’ for TB, just as there is for all new and emergent pathogens, and for TB, it is guessed that this happened around 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. There is evidence that it has be

As Sun Tzu famously said: ‘know your enemy’, or more correctly: ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’ This is true not only for human conflict but in what is probably the greatest and longest running battle the human race has ever engaged in: that between humans and their pathogens. Ultimately, COVID-19, our current enemy of focus, might kill 1%, but hopefully, many fewer now that there is a vaccine and better treatments

Life is full of initially hidden and unintended impacts and consequences; for something as huge and pervasive as COVID, no doubt they will be many and varied: some good, some bad, some just resulting in different. The global infrastructural leadership of the UK in the area of genomics, underpinned by the public and charitable contributions of the UK Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust, has been critical in surveillance, variant detection, and now screening. By February 2