HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Two researchers at Marshall University are marking a milestone with more than 30 years dedicated to studying pneumonia.
“It has gone very fast because it was, really, very enjoyable,” said Dr. Maurice Mufson who works with Ronald Stanek in the microbiology research lab at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine.
Mufson’s career began with the National Institutes of Health in 1961 where he studied respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which causes infections in the lungs and respiratory tract.
That work extended to Huntington where he joined the School of Medicine faculty in 1976.
He later shifted his focus specifically to pneumonia.
Starting in 1989, he and Stanek researched community-acquired pneumonia, the most common type of pneumonia, including the more serious invasive pneumococcal pneumonia.
Invasive pneumococcal pneumonia occurs when the pneumococcus enters the blood.
“The best data started in 1981 and we have been carrying it through all the ways to 2020 still,” Dr. Mufson told MetroNews.
“To our knowledge, no other investigators looking at invasive pneumococcal disease in cities in the United States or around the world have as long a study as we have.”
Together, Mufson and Stanek have researched the effects of the pneumococcal vaccinations, PNEUMOVAX 23 and Prevar 13, on different populations in Appalachia, like children.
“It seemed pertinent since lots of people were getting such serious disease and the vaccines, it seemed, were going to change the landscape and they have,” Mufson said.
Routine immunizations for babies and kids have drastically reduced illness rates.
For adults, “Mostly those who get invasive pneumococcal pneumonia, for example, among the adults, have underlying comorbidities that increase their risk for the disease,” he said.
Over the research time, the disease has become resistant to penicillin and other antibiotics.
“There seems to be a never-ending evolution to pneumococcal disease,” Stanek said in a statement.
The two also determined that, on average, survivors of invasive pneumococcal pneumonia, the more serious illness, live ten fewer years than those who never had it.
Mufson retired from Marshall in 2002 as a professor emeritus but has continued to work as a researcher, lecturer and mentor.
His tentative plan is to retire fully within the next few years, though he admitted it would be difficult to step away from the research.
“The field is so interesting,” he said.