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Combating Campylobacter with common sense

A ban on the sale of fresh chicken meat is the not answer to preventing outbreaks of campylobacteriosis says food microbiologist Associate Professor John Brooks.

24 Jul 2006

Digital magnetofluidics holds hope for better medicine

Critical advances in medicine and environmental protection promise to emerge from a new method for biochemical analysis of fluids developed by an international science team led in part by Arizona State University researchers.

21 Jul 2006

Dangers of unregulated herbal therapy

A Case Report in this week's issue of The Lancet highlights the dangers of unregulated herbal therapy.

21 Jul 2006

Suspect chicken smuggled in from China may have been eaten

Health officials in Michigan in the U.S. are working to track down frozen Chinese poultry smuggled into the United States and found in a warehouse in Oakland County.

13 Jul 2006

More Cadbury chocs may be tainted

The scare over salmonella infected chocolate has gathered momentum with another thirty of Cadbury's products now being tested for the nasty bug.

3 Jul 2006

New guidelines for healthy swimming

The World Health Organization (WHO) is launching the world's first-ever international guidelines on how to create safe places to swim and bathe.

28 Jun 2006

Cadbury kept quiet about contaminated chocolate

Chocolate manufacturer Cadbury Schweppes has been forced to recall thousands of chocolate bars because of claims they are contaminated by salmonella.

26 Jun 2006

Brits call for ban on imported eggs

According to a report by the European Food Safety Authority many poultry farms in EU countries are contaminated with salmonella, and eggs imported to Britain carry a food poisoning risk.

18 Jun 2006

Bush's Draconian plan to ban stem cell research flounders as Harvard goes it alone

Scientists at Harvard University in the United States, in direct defiance of President Bush's wish to ban such research, have begun efforts to clone human embryos.

7 Jun 2006

Angola reports 41,475 cholera cases and 1576 deaths

As of 31 May 2006, Angola has reported a total of 41,475 cholera cases and 1576 deaths (overall case fatality rate (CFR) 3.8%).

6 Jun 2006

FDA statement on Bausch & Lomb inspection

Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued Bausch & Lomb a report detailing its observations at the conclusion of the inspection of the Greenville, SC plant and a related facility as part of an investigation into a recent increase in Fusarium keratitis infections associated with contact lens wearers using the ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens cleaning solution.

17 May 2006

Space technology to help hospitals contain spread of avian flu infection

In response to concerns from hospitals to prepare for eventual pandemic flu outbreaks, the French company AirInSpace, with support from ESA's Technology Transfer Programme, has successfully adapted technology developed to protect astronauts for use in critical care centres to protect immune-deficient patients against airborne pathogens such as the avian flu virus.

10 May 2006

Potential vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis developed

Development of a fundamentally new "candidate," or potential, vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis (LEASH-ma-NIGH-a-sis), a parasitic disease that kills about 60,000 people annually, is reported in the current issue of ACS Chemical Biology. Spread by the bite of infected female sand flies, visceral leishmaniasis infects about 500,000 people annually, with the majority of cases occurring in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sudan and Brazil.

26 Apr 2006

Chernobyl: 20 years later

Chernobyl, the most significant accident in nuclear history, took place on 26 April 1986. Even 20 years later, the accident has left the world with many unanswered questions about its impact on human health, the environment, and the socio-economic sector.

19 Apr 2006

FDA investigates abortion pill death

It seems that since the FDA approved the use of the abortion pill RU-486, (Mifeprex/ mifepristone) in September 2000, six women in the U.S. have died.

12 Apr 2006

Discovery of new human retrovirus

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers and their colleagues have discovered a new retrovirus in humans that is closely related to a cancer-causing virus found in mice. Their findings describe the first documented cases of human infection with a retrovirus that is native to rodents.

10 Apr 2006

Cancer chemical scare over soft drinks

Tens of thousands of bottles of soft drinks were removed from shop shelves yesterday after concerns that they could contain a potentially cancer-causing chemical.

3 Apr 2006

Lives in danger as drug trial goes horribly wrong

In a drug trial which went horribly wrong two men are critically ill in a London hospital and four others are seriously ill, after suffering violent reactions to a new drug they took as part of a clinical trial.

16 Mar 2006

Genome signature tagging used to quickly identify and distinguish between pathogens and harmless microbes

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new, high-throughput technique for identifying the many species of microorganisms living in an unknown "microbial community."

6 Mar 2006

Emerging infectious agents pose new risks for people with bleeding disorders

An international team of scientists, including a hematologist from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, has concluded that people with bleeding disorders such as hemophilia remain at risk from emerging infectious agents in plasma and blood transfusions. For this reason, recombinant therapies, that is, those produced in the laboratory, must always be an option

16 Feb 2006