Research

I spend most of my time in the lab. I’m a research scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, where I study a polio-like disease called acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM. AFM causes limb weakness in children. Several infectious agents have been isolated from AFM patients, but most often, we find a virus called enterovirus D68.

That’s where I come in. We know so little about EV-D68, and that makes it hard to prevent AFM. How does the virus get into a kid’s spinal cord? How come some kids are more susceptible than others? Why does the virus only circulate every other year, and what happened to it during the off-years of COVID? I’m in the lab every day trying to find answers to these questions so we can prevent more kids from getting this nasty virus.