“About 10% of all women who get puerperal sepsis, or childbed fever, will end up dying. It’s devastating and also may cause the child to die,” said James M. Musser, MD, PhD, corresponding author on a paper that appeared in in February.

In the highly publicized study, Musser and his team were the first in the field of bacteria research to study group A strep on such a large scale. By looking at the interplay between three separate entities (the genome, transcriptome and virulence), they generated massive amounts of data requiring the use of artificial intelligence for analysis and made an unexpected discovery about how group A strep causes human infections. They found the trigger that determines whether group A strep acts as a “normal” pathogen, or a really angry flesh-eating pathogen. The results may eventually lead to a vaccine, treatment or diagnostics for childbed fever.