Dr. Eko is a microbiologist interested in how chlamydia infection works, with the goal of developing an effective vaccine.

Dr. Eko is originally from Nigeria. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Vienna in Austria. He has been at Morehouse since 2000.

Chlamydia is a very common sexually transmitted infection, caused by the bacteria Chlamydia trachomatis. It can cause a number of long-term complications in women but it is also estimated to be completely asymptomatic in ~70% of cases. Thus, a long-term goal of Dr. Eko’s is to understand why most women have no symptoms after infection with chlamydia but other women have severe pain or even infertility.

In a recent study, Dr. Eko and colleagues found that the time of day that the infection occurs matters, at least in mice. They infected female mice with chlamydia either in the morning or at night, and found that the mice infected in the morning took longer to clear the infection and had more damage to the uterus.

It has been shown in many contexts that the circadian rhythm affects the immune system, so they next looked at differences in immune system signals in the two sets of mice. They found that the mice infected in the morning launched a stronger inflammatory response in response to the infection. This is likely associated with the damage observed in the uterus. The mice infected in the morning also had fewer offspring on average than the mice infected in the evening, suggesting that their fertility was decreased.

These results did not depend on the strain of chlamydia: mice infected with C. muridarum (mouse chlamydia) or C. trachomatis (human chlamydia) had similar results. Likewise, it did not depend on age: like in humans, older mice recovered from their infections faster, but still showed the same effect of time of day.

An important consideration in translating this research to humans is that mice are nocturnal: the infection in the morning coincides with when the mice are usually asleep and infection in the evening coincides with when the mice are usually awake and active. Thus, Dr. Eko and colleagues suspect that the opposite pattern would be seen in humans - women who are infected with chlamydia during the day might have a better outcome.