Thanks for your interest! Unfortuantely data on different preventative measures is fairly sparse and even then common nursery bugs are very hard to control due to pre/asymptomatic tranmission and sometimes long incubation times.

Frequent infections in nursery help toddlers build up immune systems Young children who attend nursery get sick more often than those who don’t, but they will go on to have fewer illnesses during early school years, finds a new review of evidence by a group of parent-s...

Young children who attend nursery get sick more often than those who don’t, but will have fewer illnesses during early school years, finds a new review of evidence by parent-scientists including Dr @lucyvandorp.bsky.social @ucllifesciences.bsky.social and Dr Leo Swadling @uclmedsci.bsky.social

Huge thanks to a wonderful team of emergency medicine registrar Dr Wis Wang-Koh, maternal antibodies expert @drsarahcaddy.bsky.social, vaccines expert
@tcellvaccineucl.bsky.social, virologist @virologyhouldcroft.bsky.social and our collective nine little inspirations for the work.

If you think your toddler’s often ill, you’re right – what going to nursery means for catching colds and building immunity Having an under five in your household increases your risk as an adult of having diarrhoea and vomiting.

We’ve written more about this in a small piece for The Conversation @theconversation.com.

theconversation.com/if-you-think....

The good news is there’s evidence that higher illness rates during nursery are followed by fewer illnesses when children transition to school. Most children build substantial immunity within ~2 years of starting nursery.

One of the most effective steps parents can take to support this transition is ensuring vaccinations are up to date. There’s also an important role for employers, recognising that increased illness at this stage often means parents may need more flexibility and leave for caring responsibilities.

Germ factories or immune boot camps? Infection and immunity in childcare settings | Clinical Microbiology Reviews SUMMARYChildcare outside the home is a common experience for many children in high-income countries. It is associated with an increase in the incidence of infectious diseases—not just for the child but also for their parents and other household members. In this review, we explore this phenomenon from multiple angles, combining age at first infection, maternal antibody dynamics, seroepidemiology, cohort studies, and outbreak reports to understand the relationship between the immune systems of children starting childcare and the pathogen milieu they encounter. We consider the interaction between the age at which many infants begin out-of-home childcare and the maturation of cellular and humoral immunity. We bring together data on what is “normal” for infections in the first years of life: the range and incidence of gastrointestinal, respiratory, and rash-forming illnesses that typically infect young children. We review evidence of the additional impact that childcare has on the transmission of these pathogens. The economic and personal impacts of these illnesses are considered, including our lived experiences. We ask whether there are effective interventions to reduce illness associated with childcare, as the UK adds chickenpox to the childhood vaccination schedule. Finally, we consider evidence suggesting a trade-off between infections earlier in life and when children start formal schooling. We conclude that the high burden of infection in young children is normal, linked to the immunobiology of infants and the transmission dynamics of individual pathogens, but the collective impact of these infections is underappreciated.

We found that the number of infections in the first 1-2 years of nursery is largely driven by waning maternal immunity, the process of immune building and the high transmissibility of common childhood pathogens.

Article here 👉 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Even working in infectious disease genomics, it came as a bit of a shock how often toddlers get sick. So myself and a set of colleagues, expertly led by @virologyhouldcroft.bsky.social, set out to review the evidence. How much infection is expected, does it increase with nursery attendance and why?

Completely reasonable response I'd say 😉

Germ factories or immune boot camps? Infection and immunity in childcare settings | Clinical Microbiology Reviews SUMMARYChildcare outside the home is a common experience for many children in high-income countries. It is associated with an increase in the incidence of infectious diseases—not just for the child bu...

Have you ever wondered why children starting nursery/daycare pick up so many germs? I certainly did, and with a crack team of parent-scientists/clinicians, we set out to answer that question. Is childcare a germ factory or an immune bootcamp? journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Come join us!

We are looking for a Professor or Associate Professor of Computational Genomics in Health and Disease at University College London.

Details 👉 www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Post funded by UCL Health Strategy.

There's still a few days left to apply for our AI-Intervene PhD project mapping the drivers of avian influenza using viral genomics, bird migration data and AI-powered phylodynamics.

Come join us! Details below.

#FindaPhD #LondonPhD #genomics

First ancient human herpesvirus genomes document their deep history with humans Analysis of ancient DNA has confirmed that certain human herpesviruses became part of the human genome thousands of years ago, in a study involving a UCL researcher.

"These viruses have been co-evolving with human populations for well over 2,000 years, underscoring a deep, ongoing shared history between virus and host”: Dr @lucyvandorp.bsky.social on her ancient DNA analysis of human herpes viruses @ugiatucl.bsky.social @ucllifesciences.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... It's finally out! Meriam Guellil expertly led this project from the first HHV6 detection to the final paper. We found both human herpesviruses 6A and 6B in ancient remains going back 2500 years.

This work is likely just the start of better understanding the deep history and spatio-temporal dynamics of these importance viruses.

Great to play a role in this work, led from initial screening to final paper by Meriam Guellil @univie.ac.at.

There are likely many more HHV-6A/HHV-6B to be found in ancient human genomes to further support direct calibration of the age of integrated viral clades and acquired HHV infections.

Ancient genomes show that these viruses have been co-evolving with human populations across Europe, dating from early Italy to medieval England, Belgium, and Russia; underscoring a deep, ongoing host-virus history.

Through screening of ~4,000 archaeological human samples, this work reconstructed 11 ancient genomes of HHV-6A and HHV-6B. These viruses still infect many of us today.

Tracing 2500 years of human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B diversity through ancient DNA First ancient HHV-6 genomes reveal 2500 years of phylogenetic continuity and provide insights into the endogenization of HHV-6A.

New paper out in Science Advances:
Tracing 2500 years of human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B diversity through ancient DNA
👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Reconstructing the histories of ancient pathogens with @poojaswali.bsky.social of @ugiatucl.bsky.social at the @lien-london.bsky.social meeting.

Makes me want to learn every one of these stories!

Thanks @zaminiqbal.bsky.social!

Feel free to share or reach out with questions!

Deadline: 12th Jan 2026

#FindaPhD #LondonPhD #PhD #AI #Bioinformatics #Ecology #AvianInfluenza #MachineLearning #OneHealth #AIINTERVENE

Learn more about the AI-INTERVENE programme 👉 www.ai-intervene.net.

We're a supportive friendly group @ugiatucl.bsky.social looking for candidates with an interest in AI, ecology, infectious disease genomics, or data science who want to tackle questions in #OneHealth and biodiversity research.

FlightPath: Predicting Avian Influenza Evolution through AI-Powered Phylodynamics and Bird Migration Modelling at University of Reading on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - FlightPath: Predicting Avian Influenza Evolution through AI-Powered Phylodynamics and Bird Migration Modelling at University of Reading, listed on FindAPhD.com

We’re recruiting a PhD student as part of the AI-Intervene DTP to join FlightPath, an exciting project combining viral genomics, bird migration data, and AI-powered phylodynamics to forecast how avian influenza evolves and spreads.

Project Details 🦠🧬🦅🦆🌎: tinyurl.com/2v4xaxmx.

PhD candidate Cedric Tan from @ucl.ac.uk @ugiatucl.bsky.social is exploring how pathogens and antimicrobial resistance jump between species, supported by a scholarship from A*STAR Singapore and @astar-gis.bsky.social.

#UCLSingapore
#UCLHealth

www.ucl.ac.uk/global/case-...

We're a small friendly team excited by how we can use large spatio-temporal genetic datasets to map the drivers of (host)pathogen success.

Please get in touch if you have questions!

#PhD #AMR #genomics #findaPhD #LondonPhD

Mapping Phage Diversity through Population-Scale Metagenomics in the Hunt for Novel Antimicrobials at University College London on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Mapping Phage Diversity through Population-Scale Metagenomics in the Hunt for Novel Antimicrobials at University College London, listed on FindAPhD.com

Project Details: www.findaphd.com/phds/project....

Doctoral Training Programme: www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical....

This project is part of the excellent @ucl.ac.uk Centre for Doctoral Training in Engineering Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance.

Funding is open to both UK and international students.

Deadline: 12 January 2026.

We are recruiting!

If you like evolutionary biology, microbial genomics, and host-pathogen interactions we have a PhD opening at @ugiatucl.bsky.social using population-scale metagenomics to map global phage diversity and uncover evolutionary signatures that could point to new antimicrobials.

The 2026 EMBL symposium 'Reconstructing the human past using ancient and modern genomics' is live with a fantastic invited speaker lineup!

Abstract deadline 9 June. If work is ongoing, plan for Heidelberg in September😉.

Organised by Maanasa Raghavan, @matejahajdi.bsky.social, Choongwon Jeong & me.