Medicine Grand Rounds- Dr. Scott Commins and Dr. Eleanor Saunders presents: The Puzzle of Post-Infection Syndromes

Dr. Scott Commins is the William J. Yount, MD Distinguished Professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he is a member of the UNC Food Allergy Initiative, the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, and the Southeastern Center of Excellence for Vector Borne Diseases. Dr. Commins maintains an active clinical practice and research program related to the alpha-gal mammalian meat allergy syndrome and the human immune response to tick bites.

Dr. Commins received his M.D. & Ph.D. (Biochemistry & Molecular Biology) from the Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston, SC). Following a residency in Internal Medicine, Scott completed a fellowship in Allergy and Clinical Immunology at The University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA). He is an author for UpToDate (Food allergy in adults; Allergy to meats) and serves as the Chief Editor for the Drug, Venom & Anaphylaxis section of Frontiers. Dr. Commins is the current President of the Southeastern Asthma, Allergy, and Immunology Society and was a member of the Congressionally-appointed Tick-Borne Disease Working Group (2018-2020) where he was co-chair of the alpha-gal syndrome and public comment subcommittees.

Dr. Eleanor Saunders is a third-year Infectious Diseases fellow at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is spending this research year studying the epidemiology of alpha-gal syndrome under the mentorship of Dr. Scott Commins at UNC and Dr. Johanna Salzer in the Rickettsial Zoonoses Branch at CDC. Her funding comes through an ORISE Fellowship with CDC.

Dr. Saunders received her MD & MPH from the UNC School of Medicine and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health (Chapel Hill, NC), and completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Bellevue Hospital/NYU Langone Health (New York, NY).