Researchers at Vanderbilt Health and around the country continue to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration to reduce the severity and lethality of respiratory infections caused by the ever-mutating SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The latest findings could lead to more targeted ways to increase insulin-stimulated glucose uptake by muscle and exercise tolerance.

Since 2014, 27 Vanderbilt faculty members have received the annual award, which recognizes “notable achievements” by researchers early in their first faculty appointments.

The findings could bring relief to the more than 26 million people in the United States with asthma, a chronic and complex inflammatory disease of the airways.

The infection can result from inhaling spores of the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum, which grows in soil throughout Middle Tennessee, especially in soil contaminated with bird or bat droppings. Previously, blood samples had to be sent to a reference lab in Utah.