University Distinguished Professor Dr. Linda Mansfield and four other scientists were awarded funding from the United States Department of Defense to examine the contribution of the human gut microbiota and carbohydrate-mediated immune response to the development and severity of Guillain Barré Syndrome (GBS).

“GBS is the world’s leading cause of acute neuromuscular paralysis and it occurs after food poisoning with the bacterium Campylobacter jejuni,” says Mansfield. According to a 2009 case-control study, Military personnel have an incidence of GBS that is more than double that seen in the general United States population.

The project, “Contribution of the Human Gut Microbiome to the Development and Severity of Guillain Barré Syndrome,” is led by Dr. Christine Szymanski of the University of Georgia. She and Mansfield are working with three other co-PIs: Dr. Hugh Wilson of Southern General Hospital in London, Dr. David Tribble of the Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Program at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Hawaii, and Dr. Zhahirul Islam of Stanford University and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh.

Mansfield, who is part of the College’s Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, also is the Albert C. and Lois E. Dehn Endowed Chair in Veterinary Medicine. The MSU portion of the grant was $451,918.80. For more information about Dr. Mansfield’s research, visit her PubMed or read more about her work at the College.