Adekunle Fakunle
Lecturer; Osun State University
Adekunle Fakunle is a Public Health professional with over 15 years of experience in executing various research related to epidemiology and environmental health with keen interest in Exposure Science. He holds a doctoral degree in Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa with specialty in Environmental Epidemiology focusing on Airborne Microbiome. Adekunle is a Fellow of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Risk Assessment Science (IRAS), Utrecht University, The Netherlands. As a young scholar, he developed the first protocol for home assessment of indoor microbiome exposure in Nigeria which has gained citations and prominence in the world of Microbiome. Using this protocol, he led a study that investigated exposure to residential microbiome in homes of children under the age of five years and its relationship with lower respiratory tract infections. He has publications in high-impact journal with over 300 citations and a Google Scholar h-index of 8.
Abstract
Background: Indoor microbiome diversity contributes to the development of childhood lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI), but the association is poorly understood. We aimed to study the relationship between indoor bacterial microbiome and childhood LRTI in Ibadan, Nigeria.
Method: Ninety-eight children under the age of five years hospitalized with LRTI in selected health centres in Ibadan were recruited and matched by age (±3 months), sex, and geographical location to 98 community-based controls without LRTI. Participants’ homes were visited and sampled for airborne house dust using passive air sampling technique specifically the electrostatic dustfall collectors (EDC). In the airborne dust samples, the abundance and composition of the bacterial community will be characterized by deep-sequencing targeting the 16S rRNA gene (V3-V4).
Discussion: Our study will be the first to explore the diversity and composition of house dust microbiome in residential environment in Nigeria and its association with LRTI among under-five children. It is anticipated that it will shed light on the relationship between exposure to bacterial microbiome and incidence of LRTI among under-five children and ultimately provide evidence base for strategic interventions to curtail the burgeoning burden of LRTI on the sub-continent.