Most humans would like to shed their fatty exteriors, but tuberculosis (TB)-causing bacteria rely on theirs for survival. Scientists at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)-New Jersey Medical School have now discovered a drug that cripples the TB bug by dissolving its protective fatty coating, a finding that could eventually be used to improve TB treatment in humans. The study has been posted online by Nature Chemical Biology.
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Scientists at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Medicine have discovered a mechanism that is used to protect the body from harmful bacteria. Platelets, a component of blood typically associated with clotting, were discovered to actively search for specific bacteria, and upon detection, seal it off from the rest of the body. The findings, which were published in Nature Immunology this week, provide the science community with a greater understanding of immunity.
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Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the site of injection of a contaminated lot of a steroid drug to treat symptoms such as back pain resulted in earlier identification of patients with probable or confirmed fungal spinal or paraspinal infection, allowing early initiation of medical and surgical treatment, according to a study in the June 19 issue of JAMA.
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People born during whooping cough outbreaks are more likely to die prematurely even if they survive into adulthood, research at Lund University in Sweden has found.
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An international team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has identified a highly promising new anti-tuberculosis compound that attacks the tuberculosis (TB) bacterium in two different ways.
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An initiative that combines a multidisciplinary health care approach with a range of preventive measures could cut the rate of a common airway infection among children in intensive care by more than half, a new study suggests.
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Researchers have identified a new virus in patients with severe brain infections in Vietnam. Further research is needed to determine whether the virus is responsible for the symptoms of disease.
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In research published in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, Saint Louis University researchers describe a technology that can detect new, previously unknown viruses. The technique offers the potential to screen patients for viruses even when doctors have not identified a particular virus as the likely source of an infection.
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Joseph Pidala, M.D., M.S., assistant member of the Blood and Bone Marrow Transplant and Immunology programs at Moffitt Cancer Center, and colleagues from the Chronic Graft-Versus-Host Disease Consortium have determined that certain gastrointestinal and liver-related types of chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) are associated with worsened quality of life and death.
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Patients in Vietnam and other locations with central nervous system infections may well be suffering from the effects of a newly discovered virus, according to a study to be published in mBio-, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
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A Kansas State University research associate has received a prestigious fellowship to support his research on mosquitoes and ways to prevent the spread of malaria.
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Young children and the elderly are especially susceptible to respiratory syncytial virus. The three-dimensional structure of respiratory syncytial virus has been solved by an international team from Finland and Switzerland.
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Researchers have found that antibodies against the human papillomavirus (HPV) may help identify individuals who are at greatly increased risk of HPV-related cancer of the oropharynx, which is a portion of the throat that contains the tonsils.
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Age disparities exist in the continuum of care for patients with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) with people younger than 45 years less likely to be aware of their infection or to have a suppressed viral load, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
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An international team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has identified a highly promising new anti-tuberculosis compound that attacks the tuberculosis bacterium in two different ways.
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Exciting progress has been made in the global fight against malaria. The malaria map continues to shrink each year; in the last ten years four countries have been certified malaria-free, and thirty-four additional countries are now working towards malaria elimination targets.
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Joint press release by the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
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From skeletons and biopsies, an international team of scientists was successful in reconstructing a dozen medieval and modern genomes of the leprosy-causing bacteria Mycobacterium leprae.
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As disease-causing microbes continue their worrisome trend of developing resistance to commonly used antibiotics, public health experts have called for more selective use of those medicines. A new study suggests that educating pediatricians in their offices, and auditing their prescription patterns, encourages them to choose more appropriate antibiotics for children with common respiratory infections.
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The JC polyomavirus is clearly opportunistic. It infects half the population but lethally destroys brain tissue only in immunocompromised patients - and it may be outright sneaky, too. Even as a new research paper allays fears that common mutant forms of the virus are the ones directly responsible for the disease's main attack, that same finding raises new questions about what the mutants are doing instead.
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