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So We Are AgrEED That We Can Use Duodenal Transcriptomics to Understand Environmental Enteric Dysfunction (EED)

Semester: Summer 2025


Presentation description

Diarrheal diseases kill around 760,000 children under the age of five a year ; this is the second leading cause of death in children around the world. Aside from the deaths caused, diarrheal diseases can also lead to environmental enteric dysfunction (EED), a chronic inflammatory disorder of the small intestines. EED leads to impaired nutrient absorption, stunted growth, impaired cognitive development, and is linked to malnutrition in children in low- and middle- income countries. Understanding EED is a challenge and is not completely understood, as EED presents with varying symptoms and it can be hard to isolate its specific impact. We hypothesize that duodenal transcriptomics will aid our understanding of EED and how EED impacts different age groups. This study leveraged data from RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of duodenal biopsies from children in Pakistan. Our primary objective is to determine the differences in duodenal gene expression between 13-18 month olds (n=17) and 19-24 month olds (n=35) with EED. We used Rstudio to clean and organize the dataset, and compared gene expression using DESeq2. Additionally, we examined differences in innate and adaptive immune activation, and mucosal immune and metabolic pathways. In our ongoing investigation, we are going to continue to discover the impact of EED on different age groups. This study offers a resource for understanding EED pathogenesis when it comes to different age groups and showcases potential targets for future therapeutic interventions.

Presenter Name: Carissa Chestnut
Presentation Type: Poster
Presentation Format: In Person
Presentation #A61
College: Medicine
School / Department: Internal Medicine
Research Mentor: Daniel Leung
Time: 8:30 AM
Physical Location or Zoom link:

Ballroom