Tomas Gustafsson lab

Tularemia is a rare infection which is caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis. It is characterized by general symptoms in the form of high fever and flu-like symptoms as well as specific symptom related to the clinical form of the disease – often persistent ulcers and swollen lymph-nodes. Tularemia is unusually common in the northern parts of Sweden which the highest incidence areas in the world. This sets us up for a unique opportunity to design high quality studies of this unpredictable and rare disease. Our main research questions are listed below:

• Can we improve diagnostics of tularemia and can we develop a clinical scoring system to aid clinicians?
  
  
• What is the best treatment of tularemia?
  
  
• What does tularemia cost – for the patients and for the society?
  
  
• Can we predict outbreaks of tularemia before they occur?
  
  
• Which vectors are important for transmission of tularemia?

The antibiotic development studies mainly focus on how we can bridge gaps in the antibiotic development pipeline against Neisseria gonorrhoeae – the causative agent behind gonorrhoeae which is the second most common sexually transmitted disease.