Publications by authors named "Timothy Ea Peto"
The SARS-CoV-2 genome occupies a unique place in infection biology - it is the most highly sequenced genome on earth (making up over 20% of public sequencing datasets) with fine scale information on sampling date and geography, and has been subject to unprecedented intense analysis. As a result, these phylogenetic data are an incredibly valuable resource for science and public health. However, the vast majority of the data was sequenced by tiling amplicons across the full genome, with amplicon schemes that changed over the pandemic as mutations in the viral genome interacted with primer binding sites.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The challenges of rapid upscaling of testing capacity were a major lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic response. The need for process adjustments in high-throughput testing laboratories made sample pooling a challenging option to implement.
Objective: This study aimed to evaluate whether pooling samples at source (swab pooling) was as effective as qRT-PCR testing of individuals in identifying cases of SARS-CoV-2 in real-world community testing conditions using the same high-throughput pipeline.
Article Synopsis
- - The study focuses on developing a WHO-endorsed catalogue of mutations to help predict drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTBC) as part of enhancing molecular diagnostics for quicker drug susceptibility testing.
- - Using data from 38,215 MTBC isolates across 45 countries, researchers identified and classified 15,667 mutation associations, with 1,149 mutations linked to resistance and 107 to susceptibility for 13 anti-tuberculosis drugs.
- - The findings reveal high sensitivity (>80%) and specificity (>95%) for most tested drugs, showcasing the potential of the catalogue for informing treatment decisions, although fewer resistance mutations were found for certain drugs like bedaquiline and linezolid.
Article Synopsis
- The study analyzed SARS-CoV-2 data from 3.3 million nose and throat swabs collected in the UK from April 2020 to March 2021, focusing on cycle threshold (Ct) values as an indicator of viral load.
- Out of the positive samples, a wide range of Ct values was found; lower Ct values (indicating higher viral loads) were associated with symptoms and detecting more viral genes, while factors like sex and age had minimal impact.
- The findings suggest that fluctuations in community-level Ct values could serve as an early-warning sign for potential increases in SARS-CoV-2 cases.
We conducted voluntary Covid-19 testing programmes for symptomatic and asymptomatic staff at a UK teaching hospital using naso-/oro-pharyngeal PCR testing and immunoassays for IgG antibodies. 1128/10,034 (11.2%) staff had evidence of Covid-19 at some time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Every year approximately 5000-9000 patients are admitted to a hospital with diarrhoea, which in up to 90% of cases has a non-infectious cause. As a result, single rooms are 'blocked' by patients with non-infectious diarrhoea, while patients with infectious diarrhoea are still in open bays because of a lack of free side rooms. A rapid test for differentiating infectious from non-infectious diarrhoea could be very beneficial for patients.
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