Troop 800 Eagle Scout Nick Cramer was recently featured in Virginia Commonwealth University's NEXT magazine for the research he has been doing on the treatment of tick-related illnesses.
Nick Cramer, a Ph.D. candidate, came to the Marconi Lab because he had a background in studying tick-borne diseases but wanted to find a lab focused on translational science so he could develop vaccines and other interventions for animals and humans.
When he arrived, he set out to find his own niche within the Marconi Lab umbrella, and he did so by studying ehrlichiosis.
Early signs and symptoms of ehrlichiosis, a tick transmitted bacterial disease, include fever, chills, severe headache and muscle aches. If antibiotic treatment is delayed, ehrlichiosis can sometimes cause severe illness resulting in damage to the brain or nervous system, respiratory failure, uncontrolled bleeding, organ failure or death.
“This is important because tick populations and tick-borne diseases, already prevalent in Virginia, are spreading across the Northern Hemisphere,” he said. “The problem is only getting worse.” He added that health care providers still don’t have a great understanding of how big the problem actually is. “Ehrlichiosis cases are underreported because there are no rapid point-of-care diagnostic tests available for use in humans,” he said. “For humans, really the only time they’re tested is when they’re already hospitalized, and the number of people hospitalized is going up year over year.”
In addition to a vaccine, a rapid point-of-care test would help fight and monitor the disease. He’s working on both — first for dogs, then using the lab’s proven steps for transitioning into human applications.
“The prevalence of all tick-borne disease is increasing,” Cramer said. “To mitigate this burden, the best thing we can do is get in front of it and prevent people from experiencing these terrible symptoms so they don’t have to go through this, and so they can have a chance at a better quality of life.”