Publications by authors named "Mahmoud Gazo"
Characterizing the epidemiology of circulating respiratory pathogens during the COVID-19 pandemic could clarify the burden of acute respiratory infections and monitor outbreaks of public health and military relevance. The US Department of Defense supported 2 regions for influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory infections surveillance, one in the Middle East through US Naval Medical Research Unit EURAFCENT, and another in Latin America through US Naval Medical Research Unit SOUTH. During 2020‒2022, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, we collected a total of 16,146 nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swab samples from sentinel sites in Jordan (n = 11,305) and Latin America (n = 4,841).
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- Surveillance in Kenya, Uganda, and Jordan found dangerous multidrug-resistant bacterial clones, specifically certain types of E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae.
- The study identified notable sequence types like E. coli ST131 and Klebsiella ST14 that are resistant to multiple antibiotics.
- The variety of resistance mechanisms seen in these clones poses a significant threat to public health and effective treatment options.
Background: Limited epidemiologic studies have been conducted in Jordan describing the HIV epidemic. This study aimed to address this gap to inform HIV prevention and control.
Methods: A nationally-representative cross-sectional study was conducted among adults living with HIV in Jordan.
Background: Recent studies explored which pathogens drive the global burden of pneumonia hospitalizations among young children. However, the etiology of broader acute lower respiratory tract infections (ALRIs) remains unclear.
Methods: Using a multicountry study (Albania, Jordan, Nicaragua, and the Philippines) of hospitalized infants and non-ill community controls between 2015 and 2017, we assessed the prevalence and severity of viral infections and coinfections.
Article Synopsis
- Infections, particularly invasive pneumococcal diseases (IPDs), pose significant health risks in Jordan, and current data highlights the absence of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) in the national vaccination program.
- A study involving 1,015 pediatric patients identified the prevalence of common pneumococcal serotypes, with notable findings including a high PCR positivity rate and identified serotypes such as 6B and 14.
- This research underscores the urgent need to introduce PCVs in Jordan's vaccination schedule, as it provides critical data on prevalent serotypes to guide vaccine selection.
Article Synopsis
- A study conducted between 2015-2017 analyzed the prevalence and severity of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in hospitalized infants under one year old in Albania, Jordan, Nicaragua, and the Philippines.
- Of the 3634 hospitalized infants, 31% tested positive for RSV, with severe illness linked to factors like younger age and low weight-for-age.
- The findings suggest that targeting young infants for RSV prevention could help reduce hospitalizations for acute illness in middle-income countries, where nearly a third of such cases were associated with the virus.
Background: External quality assessments (EQAs) for the molecular detection of human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are necessary to ensure the standardisation of reliable results. The Phase II, 2019-2020 World Health Organization (WHO) RSV EQA included 28 laboratories in 26 countries. The EQA panel evaluated performance in the molecular detection and subtyping of RSV-A and RSV-B.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Despite under-reporting, health workers (HWs) accounted for 2 to 30% of the reported COVID-19 cases worldwide. In line with data from other countries, Jordan recorded multiple case surges among HWs.
Methods: Based on the standardized WHO UNITY case-control study protocol on assessing risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection in HWs, HWs with confirmed COVID-19 were recruited as cases from eight hospitals in Jordan.
We characterized Middle East respiratory syndrome coronaviruses from a hospital outbreak in Jordan in 2015. The viruses from Jordan were highly similar to isolates from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, except for deletions in open reading frames 4a and 3. Transmissibility and pathogenicity of this strain remains to be determined.
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