Cohort profile: a migratory cohort study of US Marines who train in Australia.

PURPOSE: In 2012, US Marines and Sailors began annual deployments to Australia to participate in joint training exercises with the Australian Defence Force and other partners in the region. During their training, US service members are exposed to a variety of infectious disease threats not normally encountered by American citizens. This paper describes a cohort of US Marines and Sailors enrolled during five rotations to Australia between 2016 and 2020. PARTICIPANTS: Study participation is strictly voluntary. Group informational sessions are held prior to deployment to describe the study structure and goals, as well as the infectious disease threats that participants may encounter while in Australia. All participants provided written informed consent. Consented participants complete a pre-deployment questionnaire to collect data including basic demographic information, military occupational specialty, travel history, family history, basic health status and personal habits such as alcohol consumption. Blood is collected for serum, plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) processing. Data and specimen collection is repeated up to three times: before, during and after deployment. FINDINGS TO DATE: From the five rotations that comprised the 2016-2020 Marine Rotational Force-Darwin, we enrolled 1289 volunteers. Enrolments during this period were overwhelmingly white male under the age of 24 years. Most of the enrollees were junior enlisted and non-commissioned officers, with a smaller number of staff non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers, and minimal warrant officers. Over half of the enrollees had occupational specialty designations for infantry. FUTURE PLANS: In the future, we will screen samples for serological evidence of infection with Burkholderia pseudomallei, Coxiella burnetii, Ross River virus, SARS-CoV-2 and other operationally relevant pathogens endemic in Australia. Antigenic stimulation assays will be performed on PBMCs collected from seropositive individuals to characterise the immune response to these infections in this healthy American population.

Insights into transcriptional silencing and anti-silencing in Shigella flexneri: a detailed molecular analysis of the icsP virulence locus.

Transcriptional silencing and anti-silencing mechanisms modulate bacterial physiology and virulence in many human pathogens. In Shigella species, many virulence plasmid genes are silenced by the histone-like nucleoid structuring protein H-NS and anti-silenced by the virulence gene regulator VirB. Despite the key role that these regulatory proteins play in Shigella virulence, their mechanisms of transcriptional control remain poorly understood. Here, we characterize the regulatory elements and their relative spacing requirements needed for the transcriptional silencing and anti-silencing of icsP, a locus that requires remotely located regulatory elements for both types of transcriptional control. Our findings highlight the flexibility of the regulatory elements' positions with respect to each other, and yet, a molecular roadblock docked between the VirB binding site and the upstream H-NS binding region abolishes transcriptional anti-silencing by VirB, providing insight into transcriptional anti-silencing. Our study also raises the need to re-evaluate the currently proposed VirB binding site. Models of transcriptional silencing and anti-silencing at this genetic locus are presented, and the implications for understanding these regulatory mechanisms in bacteria are discussed.

Multiplex PCR analysis of clusters of unexplained viral respiratory tract infection in Cambodia.

BACKGROUND: Fevers of unknown origin constitute a substantial disease burden in Southeast Asia. In majority of the cases, the cause of acute febrile illness is not identified. METHODS: We used MassTag PCR, a multiplex assay platform, to test for the presence of 15 viral respiratory agents from 85 patients with unexplained respiratory illness representing six disease clusters that occurred in Cambodia between 2009 and 2012. RESULTS: We detected a virus in 37 (44%) of the cases. Human rhinovirus, the virus detected most frequently, was found in both children and adults. The viruses most frequently detected in children and adults, respectively, were respiratory syncytial virus and enterovirus 68. Sequence analysis indicated that two distinct clades of enterovirus 68 were circulating during this time period. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first report of enterovirus 68 in Cambodia and contributes to the appreciation of this virus as an important respiratory pathogen.

VirB alleviates H-NS repression of the icsP promoter in Shigella flexneri from sites more than one kilobase upstream of the transcription start site.

The icsP promoter of Shigella spp. is repressed by H-NS and derepressed by VirB. Here, we show that an inverted repeat located between positions -1144 and -1130 relative to the icsP transcription start site is necessary for VirB-dependent derepression. The atypical location of this cis-acting site is discussed.

Outbreak of Q fever among US military in western Iraq, June-July 2005.

An outbreak of Q fever occurred in 22 (58%) of 38 Marines deployed to Iraq in 2005. Fever (in 100% of patients), respiratory symptoms (76%), and gastrointestinal symptoms (53%) were common. Possible risk factors included dust and exposure to animals and ticks.