Diphtheria News and Research

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Diphtheria is a disease caused by a bacterium, Corynebacterium diphtheriae, that usually affects the tonsils, throat, nose and/or skin. It is passed from person to person by droplet transmission, usually by breathing in diphtheria bacteria after an infected person has coughed or sneezed. Although diphtheria disease is rare in the U.S., it appears that C diphtheriae continues to circulate in areas of the country with previously endemic diphtheria. Diphtheria also occurs in many other parts of the world.

Sense of smell may play key role in how the body deals with calories

Our sense of smell is key to the enjoyment of food, so it may be no surprise that in experiments at the University of California, Berkeley, obese mice who lost their sense of smell also lost weight.

5 Jul 2017

Vaccines can be blamed for any illness even with lack of evidence says EU court

In a landmark judgment yesterday, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that courts could consider vaccines to be the reason for an illness despite the absence of any concrete evidence to support the connection.

21 Jun 2017

Serum Institute signs licensing agreement to commercialize St. Jude vaccine against RSV

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the Serum Institute of India have signed a licensing agreement to complete development and commercialization of a St. Jude vaccine against the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the virus that causes croup and lower respiratory infections. RSV kills about 160,000 people, primarily infants, worldwide each year.

10 May 2017

Novel technique helps researchers to study function of neurons that innervate adipose tissue

A research team led by Ana Domingos, from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia, developed a new genetic technique that allows the elimination of specific neurons of the peripheral nervous system without affecting the brain.

3 Apr 2017

Maternal Tdap vaccination during pregnancy reduces pertussis risk in infants

Among infants of women who received the Tdap pertussis booster vaccine during pregnancy, the risk of contracting pertussis was reduced by an estimated 91 percent during the first two months of life - the critical period before they can receive their first childhood acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccination.

3 Apr 2017

Important vaccines that should not be missed by adults, elders and pregnant women

Vaccines are an important part of routine healthcare for adults, seniors and women who are pregnant.

16 Jan 2017

S. pneumoniae uses hosts' immune defenses to spread infection, study reveals

The bacteria that cause most cases of pneumonia worldwide secrete a toxin that helps them jump from one body to the next - with help from the hosts' immune defenses. This is the finding of a study led by researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center and published online January 11 in Cell Host & Microbe.

12 Jan 2017

Direct Relief provides medical aid to Haiti to help treat cholera and other diseases

Direct Relief today airlifted 82 tons of medical aid to Haiti to help treat cholera and other diseases that have spread widely since Hurricane Matthew struck in October, incapacitating the country's already overstretched health care system.

29 Dec 2016

Tips to prevent back-to-school illnesses in children

The backpacks are packed, lunchboxes are filled and the little ones are back in school. Kids have returned to their classrooms with stories of their summer vacations, and, unfortunately, with a host of germs ready to spread quickly in a close environment.

20 Sep 2016

People in Europe are most skeptical about vaccines

The largest ever global survey of attitudes towards vaccines reported today that public confidence in vaccines varies widely between different regions of the world, with European respondents being most sceptical.

9 Sep 2016

Pre-travel consultation can help international travelers to prepare for trip

International tourism exceeds 1.2 billion persons each year, with more than 20 percent of travelers reporting some type of illness.

31 Aug 2016

Industrial chemicals exceed safety levels in public drinking water supplies for 6 million Americans

Levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and other health problems--polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs)--exceed federally recommended safety levels in public drinking water supplies for six million people in the U.S., according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

10 Aug 2016

Researchers develop new hybrid method to study HIV protein involved in disease progression

More than 36 million people worldwide, including 1.2 million in the U.S., are living with an HIV infection. Today's anti-retroviral cocktails block how HIV replicates, matures and gets into uninfected cells, but they can't eradicate the virus.

3 Aug 2016

Tdap vaccine safe for mothers and infants

Tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccine is recommended for all pregnant women in the U.S. as the key medical intervention to protect newborn infants from pertussis (whooping cough).

12 May 2016

Doctor’s access to vaccination data can improve pediatric immunization coverage

Exchange of immunization data between a centralized city immunization registry and provider electronic health records led to significant improvements in pediatric immunization coverage, a reduction in over-immunization for adolescents, and increased completeness of immunization records, according to a study conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian, and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Citywide Immunization Registry.

6 May 2016

WHO outlines steps to close immunization gap across countries during World Immunization Week 2016

During World Immunization Week 2016, held 24-30 April, the World Health Organization highlights recent gains in immunization coverage, and outlines further steps countries can take to “Close the Immunization Gap” and meet global vaccination targets by 2020.

21 Apr 2016

Abstracts on colistin resistance and migrant health part of 300 late-breaker sessions for ECCMID 2016

The European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Disease (ESCMID) – an organization that explores risks, knowledge sharing and best practices in the fight against infectious disease – has received more than 300 late-breaker abstract submissions for its annual congress, ECCMID 2016 in Amsterdam.

31 Mar 2016

Alternatives exist to eliminate nonmedical exemptions for childhood vaccination

For more than 30 years, Mississippi and West Virginia were the only states in the country that disallowed nonmedical exemptions to mandatory school vaccination laws for religious or philosophical reasons, until they were joined by California last year. These exemption laws have provoked debate over the rights of parents versus the responsibility of government to protect public health.

9 Feb 2016

Discoveries could lead to development of novel therapies to prevent C. diff infection

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have obtained the crystal structure of a toxin from the bacterium Clostridium difficile ("C. diff") -- the leading cause of hospital-acquired diarrhea in the United States.

12 Jan 2016

ACP awarded $1,002,884 Cooperative Agreement to increase adult immunization rates in US

The American College of Physicians (ACP) was awarded a $1,002,884 Cooperative Agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to increase immunization rates in the United States.

16 Sep 2015