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Thomas N Williams
kilifi [dot] kemri-wellcome [dot] org Research
The haemoglobinopathies, including the thalassaemia and sickle haemoglobin, are the commonest genetic disorders of man. These conditions have been selected to their current frequencies because in their carrier forms they result in a survival advantage. However, in their homozygous states many result in early death. The main theme of our group’s research is to understand more about these conditions, their advantages and their disadvantages, in the hope that these insights might result in the development of new approaches to the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. We are studying the ways in which these conditions protect against malaria through studies in the field and in the laboratory; their distributions in populations both in Kenya and internationally; and their negative effects, particularly with regard to sickle cell disease.
Current projects
We are currently recruiting a birth cohort of 12,000 children to study the effects of haemoglobin disorders prospectively. We will describe their effects on the risk of admission to hospital with the various phenotypes of malaria, invasive bacterial infections and other key diseases that lead to admission to hospital in Kenya.
We are also conducting a range of epidemiological studies framed within a large Demographic Surveillance System on the coast of Kenya.
Expert Groups
Tom Williams is a core member of the Hemoglobinopathies Expert Group (part of the Noncommunicable Diseases Cluster) and the Cross-Cutting Issues Expert Group within the Global Burden of Diseases Study, 2007-10.
Collaborations
Publications
2007. The haptoglobin 2-2 genotype is associated with a reduced incidence of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in children on the coast of Kenya. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 44 (6), pp. 802-9. View on PubMed
2006. Frequencies of peripheral blood myeloid cells in healthy Kenyan children with alpha+ thalassemia and the sickle cell trait. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 74 (4), pp. 578-84. View on PubMed
2005. Negative epistasis between the malaria-protective effects of alpha+-thalassemia and the sickle cell trait. Nature genetics, 37 (11), pp. 1253-7. View on PubMed
2005. Both heterozygous and homozygous alpha+ thalassemias protect against severe and fatal Plasmodium falciparum malaria on the coast of Kenya. Blood, 106 (1), pp. 368-71. View on PubMed
2005. A polymorphism of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 is associated with a reduced incidence of nonmalarial febrile illness in Kenyan children. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 41 (12), pp. 1817-9. View on PubMed
2005. Sickle cell trait and the risk of Plasmodium falciparum malaria and other childhood diseases. The Journal of infectious diseases, 192 (1), pp. 178-86. View on PubMed
2005. Heritability of malaria in Africa. PLoS medicine, 2 (12), pp. e340. View on PubMed