There has been a flurry of recent attention over two novel infectious agents: the first, a strain of avian influenza virus (H7N9) in China that is causing severe respiratory disease and other serious health complications in people; the second, a coronavirus, first reported last year in the Middle East, that has brought a crop of new infections.
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Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have successfully tested their novel anti-cocaine vaccine in primates, bringing them closer to launching human clinical trials.
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AstraZeneca today announced top-line results of OSKIRA-1, a Phase 3 study to assess the efficacy and safety of fostamatinib, the first oral spleen tyrosine kinase inhibitor in development for rheumatoid arthritis.
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BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that it received a preliminary comment letter from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration that outlines a pathway by which BioCryst could file a New Drug Application seeking regulatory approval of intravenous (i.v.) peramivir.
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"The deadly and mysterious coronavirus that first appeared in Saudi Arabia last year has claimed two more victims, bringing the official death toll to 11," and the case count to 17, the Los Angeles Times' "Booster Shots" blog reports.
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New research findings may help scientists design drugs to treat a virus infection that causes potentially fatal brain swelling and paralysis in children.
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"A SARS-like virus has infected 15 people, nine of whom have died, mostly in Saudi Arabia, worrying some Western scientists who question whether the kingdom is sharing enough critical data on the outbreak," "[b]ut a top Saudi Arabia health official rejected those complaints on Tuesday and said the virus posed a low risk of pandemic," the Wall Street Journal reports.
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Well it hasn’t varied at all over the last 15 years, which I find pretty amazing because we’ve been through a lot of changes in general practice. Yet, the average length of consultation, as measured from a start to finish time, in a sample of 40,000 consultations in Australia in a year, shows that the average is 15 minutes and the median is 13 minutes.
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Among healthy adults who were administered a cold virus, those with shorter telomere length (a structure at the end of a chromosome) in certain cells were more likely to develop experimentally-induced upper respiratory infection than participants with longer telomeres, according to results of preliminary research published in the February 20 issue of JAMA.
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The new coronavirus that has emerged in the Middle East is well-adapted to infecting humans but could potentially be treated with immunotherapy, according to a study to be published on February 19 in mBio-, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
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"A new virus that emerged in the Middle East last year and has killed five people is well adapted to infecting humans but could potentially be treated with drugs that boost the immune system, scientists said on Tuesday," Reuters reports, noting, "The virus, called novel coronavirus or NCoV, is from the same family as the common cold and as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome."
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The UK's national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, is now the first and only place in Europe where pathogens requiring Containment Level 3 - including serious viruses such as those responsible for AIDS, Hepatitis and some types of flu - can be analysed at atomic and molecular level using synchrotron light.
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A research team from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has discovered an approach that could make gene therapy dramatically more effective for patients.
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The Soyfoods Association of North America today announced that it has released a video on the Benefits of Soyfoods for Active Adults demonstrating how soyfoods can help you stay fit and healthy. Americans who are trying to lead healthier lives will find that soyfoods boost their energy, improve heart health, and provide antioxidants.
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According to an updated Cochrane review on vitamin C and the common cold, vitamin C seems to be particularly beneficial for people under heavy physical stress. In five randomized trials of participants with heavy short-term physical stress, vitamin C halved the incidence of the common cold.
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This year's flu season has now been declared an epidemic, with a particularly dangerous strain that has hospitalized more than 3,700 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Cold, allergies, the flu or something else? Thanks to advanced technology, physicians at Loyola University Health System receive confirmation of their patient's respiratory illness within one hour. Loyola is one of only two hospitals in lllinois to use the FDA-approved FilmArray Respiratory Panel, which screens for 17 viral and 3 bacterial pathogens in about 60 minutes.
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Respiratory conditions that restrict breathing such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are common killers worldwide. But no effective treatments exist to address the major cause of death in these conditions - excess mucus production.
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Marinomed Biotechnologie GmbH, a company focused on the development of innovative therapies for respiratory diseases, today announced that it has been granted Chinese Patent No. CN101678040, entitled 'Antiviral polymer', by the Chinese patent office.
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BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced completion of the planned interim analysis of the peramivir Phase 3 trial in patients admitted to the hospital with serious influenza. The difference between peramivir and control groups for the primary endpoint was small and the recalculated sample size was greater than the predefined futility boundary of 320 subjects. Based on this information, the independent data monitoring committee (DMC) recommended that the study be terminated for futility.
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