Research Relief

Research drags on and on. Here at Mayo, we are required to do a research 'trimester' (3 months) during our third year. I did mine at the very end of the year-- i.e. April to June of 2006. It was actually quite an interesting project, although I seemed to have put in a lot more hours than some people (ahem, JB) during this time, which is generally viewed as a "break" from other responsibilities but which basically landed me in a "bat cave" of a room for many, many hours a day, staring at a computer screen.

I did a chart review project looking at the electronic medical records of adult kidney transplant recipients transplanted between 2001 and 2004 to evaluate the incidence and risk factors for herpes zoster (or "shingles," the reactivation of varicella or the chicken pox virus), which tends to be more complicated/severe in a population under high-dose immunosuppression after transplantation. The research was relevant in light of the development of Zostavax (Merck), a vaccine recently approved to significantly reduce the burden of illness of shingles in an immunocompetent population of 60 years of age and older.

While the data collection part of the project ended in June, I have spent the past 6 months or so preparing the manuscript, which has been a long (and, at times, frustrating) process but from which I have learned a ton. I have never written a paper of this scope by myself and haven't had this much exposure to statistical analysis before either-- there are a lot of things to think about when trying to discuss this data! But I have had great guidance from my advisor, Robin, in Infectious Disease as well as from the people in the statistics department. It has been hard to do this in bits and spurts, especially since I have been on the road for much of the past few months. But the paper is submitted!

Today, I sent it ("Varicella Zoster Virus-Associated Disease in Adult Kidney Transplant Recipients:Incidence and Risk Factor Analysis") in to the journal Transplant Infectious Disease for review for publication. I have no idea what the process is like from here on out-- I expect that it will be reviewed, rejected, or recommended to be revised several times, but I feel (I really hope!) that the hardest work is behind me. It's nice to (finally!) have this off my chest/out of my hands for a while (Lesley, get cracking!).

I had a little episode of panic yesterday. I realized that, back in November, I submitted the abstract for this paper to the American Transplant Congress meeting in San Francisco from May 5-9th. Since then, we have bought our tickets to/from Africa, which return us to Minnesota on May 5th. So, if my abstract is accepted (I think I'm supposed to hear in the next week or two), I may be flying straight to Cali from MN. We'll see. Honestly, I have no idea where my mind has been this last month or so. Not where it should be, obviously. I hope this, too, all works out.