$1 Million Grant Awarded to Study Babesiosis

A private foundation has awarded more than $1 million to a Yale School of Public Health researcher to study babesiosis, a worldwide vector–borne illness that is transmitted by the same tick that is responsible for Lyme disease.

Peter J. Krause, M.D., HS ’73, a senior research scientist in the division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, will receive $1,050,000 over three years to study the disease that is endemic in the Northeastern and northern Midwestern United States. The grant will support work that will increase understanding of babesiosis and provide the basis for NIH funding to further investigate the infection.

Cases of babesiosis range from asymptomatic to fatal, with a 5 percent mortality rate that is as high as 20 percent in those with compromised immune systems (as in patients who lack a spleen or are suffering from malignancy or HIV infection). A parasite related to malaria, the Babesia organism thrives in red blood cells. The disease is usually transmitted by ticks, but is also infrequently transmitted through blood transfusion.

Prior to his recent appointment at Yale, Krause was a professor of pediatrics and director of infectious diseases at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center at the University of Connecticut. His research on babesiosis began when a colleague requested that he write a chapter for a textbook. From that initial prompt, babesiosis became his research focus. “I became an authority on a little known disease that, ironically, primarily affects adults,” he said. As one of the few translational researchers who specialize in babesiosis, Krause fields calls and consults patients from all over the world. For more than a decade, he has conducted longitudinal babesiosis studies in Connecticut and on nearby Block Island and Nantucket.

“Babesiosis has gotten little respect and very little funding,” said Krause. “It’s far more important than people realize.”

Krause is also an authority on Lyme disease and is investigating the long–term effects of babesiosis and Lyme disease coinfection as part of a more general study on the health burden of human babesiosis. A primary objective of this project is to map the geographic expansion of babesiosis and Lyme disease with Durland Fish, a professor in the same division at YSPH and director of the Yale Center for EcoEpidemiology. This project will be based in part on the analysis of 20,000 ticks collected over the entire Northeastern United States in order to identify the location of human tick–borne pathogens. Fish is a leading authority on Lyme disease and related tick–borne diseases. Other projects include the investigation of the genetic basis of increased severity of babesiosis with aging, discovery of Babesia microti biomarkers that may lead to improved diagnostic tests and novel therapeutic targets, and investigation of host immune factors in protection against babesiosis. These projects will be carried out in collaboration with scientists from Yale and other institutions in the Northeast.