The fact is, he says, researchers don't know that much about the mechanics of how bugs spread, so he's trying to understand it from every possible angle. He's aware that confirming that your roommate gave you a horrible flu could ruin some perfectly nice relationships, but it's for science. "We're going to deep sequence the genetic code of the agent to see if it was really exactly the same thing," Milton explains. If the student's contacts get infected, researchers will try to pin down whether they got the bug from the original subject or someone else. "We're going to swab them every day for a week to see if they get infected." The researchers will then use the student's contacts to try to figure out how infections spread from person to person: "roommates, study buddies, girlfriends and boyfriends," Milton says. As the student breathes, the machine collects whatever virus they've got from the droplets in their breath. Those sick enough will get sent around the corner to a room with a crazy-looking, Rube-Goldberg-like contraption known as the Gesundheit machine.įor half an hour, the student sits in the machine. Barbara Albert, who screens for the study. "She had some of the right symptoms: cough, little bit of runny nose, but didn't have much of a fever," says Dr. One student does come by, but doesn't make the cut. Don Milton recruit students to join the new virus study they're working on. When one of them gets sick, the student will be sent to the clinic at the School of Public Health, just across the street from the dorms. Milton, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, is hoping dozens of students will enroll for the study, which will help him look at flu transmission. Don Milton and his undergraduate research assistants, Louie Gold and Amara Fox, are recruiting students for his new study on how the flu - and other viruses - spread.Īs incentives, they have vouchers for the school convenience store and free hot chocolate. Somayeh Youssefi (left) set up the machine before patients use it. Listen Undergraduate Shira Rubin gamely demonstrates the Gesundheit machine, which collects samples of virus from the breath that sick students exhale.
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