Infectious Diseases News and Research

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Researchers identify alternative treatment for bacterial meningitis

With the increasing threat of antibiotic resistance, there is a growing need for new treatment strategies against life threatening bacterial infections.

10 Apr 2019

TGen review associates a gene with hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma is a long medical name for the most common form of liver cancer, a malignancy whose incidence has nearly doubled over the past decade, making it the fastest growing type of cancer in the U.S., and the third-leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide.

9 Apr 2019

UTMB receives grant to combat highly-lethal hemorrhagic fever viruses

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Profectus Biosciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Mapp Biopharmaceutical and Genevant Sciences Corp. have been awarded up to $35 million to advance the development of rapid-acting vaccines and broad-spectrum treatments of the highly-lethal hemorrhagic fever viruses Ebola and Marburg.

9 Apr 2019

Experts detail efforts to improve seasonal and universal influenza vaccine

In a new series of articles, experts in immunology, virology, epidemiology, and vaccine development detail efforts to improve seasonal influenza vaccines and ultimately develop a universal influenza vaccine.

9 Apr 2019

International Space Station teeming with bacteria and fungi finds study

A latest study from the NASA has found that the International Space Station is filled with bacteria and fungi.

9 Apr 2019

Candida auris – a dangerous drug resistant fungi on the rise

Candida auris – a fungus, is one of the newest organisms to plague humans with its resistant nature. It is as present resistant to the available antifungal agents and is emerging as a threat around the world.

8 Apr 2019

Study finds link between common virus and faster disease progression in cystic fibrosis

A new study has found that cystic fibrosis patients who have a common virus may experience faster disease progression than patients who do not have the virus. Signs of faster cystic fibrosis disease progression included earlier times to lung transplant referral and reaching the final stages of the disease.

8 Apr 2019

New HIV drug that is like a "Swiss Army knife of immunotherapies"

HIV is a tricky virus that causes a unique phenomenon where the virus hides within the immune cells of patients when they are on treatment with the antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs. When they are off the drugs, the virus comes back.

7 Apr 2019

Exemptions surge as parents and doctors do ‘Hail Mary’ around vaccine laws

At two public charter schools in the Sonoma wine country town of Sebastopol, more than half the kindergartners received medical exemptions from state-required vaccines last school year.

5 Apr 2019

UMSOM's Institute for Genome Sciences receives $17.5 million grant for infectious disease research

The Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine was awarded $17.5 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to fund the IGS Genome Center for Infectious Diseases for another five years.

5 Apr 2019

Poverty can become embedded across wide swaths of the genome, study finds

A new Northwestern University study challenges prevailing understandings of genes as immutable features of biology that are fixed at conception.

4 Apr 2019

Opioid epidemic fuels growing rates of some infectious diseases

The United States faces a converging public health crisis as the nation's opioid epidemic fuels growing rates of certain infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, heart infections, and skin and soft tissue infections.

4 Apr 2019

NIAID awards $22 million grant to develop antibody-based therapies against lethal viruses

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has awarded an international consortium led by Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of Montefiore, a five-year, $22 million grant to develop antibody-based therapies against four highly lethal viruses for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments.

4 Apr 2019

Hepatitis C-infected thoracic organs can be safely transplanted, study finds

Infectious diseases experts and transplant physicians and surgeons at Brigham and Women's Hospital have blocked the transmission of hepatitis C from infected organ donors to recipients in need of hearts or lungs.

4 Apr 2019

New all-in-one immunotherapy approach kicks out hiding HIV and also kills it

In a first on the quest to cure HIV, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health scientists report today in EBioMedicine that they've developed an all-in-one immunotherapy approach that not only kicks HIV out of hiding in the immune system, but also kills it.

4 Apr 2019

New ebolavirus species found in bats may be more common than previously thought

A recently discovered species of ebolavirus may be more widespread than previously thought and could be hosted by a particular bat species, according to findings published by a University of Arkansas biologist. The ebolavirus species, named Bombali, is one of two currently not known to infect humans.

2 Apr 2019

MUSC study provides evidence for link between 'leaky gut' and autoantibody production in HIV-positive patients

Human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, attacks the immune system, making affected individuals more susceptible to infections. When patients with HIV are treated with antiretroviral therapy, their immune system can recover, but some of them produce self-destructive proteins, or autoantibodies.

2 Apr 2019

Potential target for Group A Streptococcus vaccine identified

Most people think of "strep throat" as a relatively benign infection cured by a round of antibiotics and a few days of rest. But the bacterium that causes strep throat -- Group A Streptococcus -- is also responsible for a number of much more dangerous disorders, including rheumatic heart disease and toxic shock syndrome.

1 Apr 2019

Nanovaccine boosts immunity in mice with gut microbiome-mediated metabolic syndrome

A new class of biomaterial developed by Cornell researchers for an infectious disease nanovaccine effectively boosted immunity in mice with metabolic disorders linked to gut bacteria - a population that shows resistance to traditional flu and polio vaccines.

29 Mar 2019

Study provides framework for developing Ebola virus therapeutic under FDA Animal Rule

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases today announced that, for the first time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has provided formal regulatory agreement for use of an animal model to support development of a drug candidate, remdesivir, for treating deadly Ebola virus infections.

29 Mar 2019