Infectious Diseases News and Research

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Emergent BioSolutions fourth quarter total revenues increase to $107.9M

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. announced today its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2011.

9 Mar 2012

IDRI receives $1 million RHSC grant to eliminate leprosy

Leprosy, otherwise referred to as Hansen's Disease, is one of the most ancient diseases known to humans. Although the World Health Organization declared leprosy to be under control in many previously endemic countries, most experts agree that current approaches to treating the disease are not sufficient to eliminate the disease as a public health problem. Currently, 1.6 billion people are considered at risk of exposure to leprosy, while over 800 new cases occur every day.

9 Mar 2012

3SBio, DaVita partner to offer dialysis services in NE China

DaVita Inc., a leading provider of kidney care services for those diagnosed with chronic kidney disease (CKD) today announced it has entered into an agreement with 3SBio Inc., a leading Chinese biotechnology developer of biopharmaceutical products, to establish a joint venture for providing dialysis treatments in northeastern China.

9 Mar 2012

Infection with M. genitalium may double African women's HIV risk

A common sexually transmitted bacterial infection more than doubles the risk of HIV infection in African women, reports a study in the March issue of AIDS.

9 Mar 2012

Enzo Biochem to unveil data on AmpiProbe HCV assay at ESCMID meeting

Enzo Biochem Inc. announced today that the company will present for the first time peer-reviewed data on detection of hepatitis C virus (HCV) using its novel AmpiProbe technology platform, which provides low cost and high sensitivity real-time nucleic acid amplification assays.

9 Mar 2012

Many Ethiopians coming to camp in search of traditional cure for HIV turn to ARVs, WSJ reports

The Wall Street Journal examines how many HIV-positive Ethiopians coming to a "squatter's camp" at Ethiopia's Entoto Mountain in the hopes that a spring believed to contain holy water would cure HIV instead begin treatment with antiretrovirals.

7 Mar 2012

Only about 75% of U.S. HIV/AIDS patients remain in care consistently

Only about 75 percent of HIV/AIDS patients in the United States remain in care consistently, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published online this week in AIDS. The study of patients across the United States is the first to provide a comprehensive national estimate of HIV care retention and information about patients who are most likely to continue their treatment over time.

7 Mar 2012

MTPC, Medicago partner to develop and commercialize three new vaccines

Medicago Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing highly effective and competitive vaccines based on proprietary manufacturing technologies and Virus-Like Particles (VLPs), today announced the establishment of a strategic alliance with Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation (MTPC) through the execution of a Master Research Collaboration Agreement.

6 Mar 2012

Leading AIDS experts issue new HIV guidelines

Leading AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins and other institutions around the world have issued new guidelines to promote entry into and retention in HIV care, as well as adherence to HIV treatment, drawn from the results of 325 studies conducted with tens of thousands of people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

6 Mar 2012

Rep. Sensenbrenner sends 'fact-finding letter' to White House science adviser about bird flu studies

"Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), a former head of the House committees on science and the judiciary, and currently vice chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, last week sent a 'fact-finding letter' to White House science adviser John Holdren, asking pointed questions about how the U.S. government has handled the controversy" surrounding two studies that showed how H5N1 bird flu virus could be manipulated to become transmissible among ferrets, a model for humans, "and questioning whether it should have funded the two flu studies," ScienceInsider reports.

6 Mar 2012

Mount Sinai researchers argue different views of how to safely handle H5N1 flu viruses

In the controversy surrounding the newly developed strains of avian H5N1 flu viruses, scientists and policy makers are struggling with one question in particular: what level of biosafety is best for studying these potentially lethal strains of influenza? In a pair of commentaries, researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the University of Michigan argue their different views of how to safely handle H5N1 flu viruses.

6 Mar 2012

Consensus across studies promises to enhance NIH-supported asthma clinical research

A consortium of federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations has published a report proposing a set of common measures and data-collection methods for use in asthma clinical research.

3 Mar 2012

New outcome measures may reduce disparities in children with asthma

Newly proposed asthma outcome measures will help standardize and improve results from the hundreds of millions of dollars the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends annually to study asthma, according to the Merck Childhood Asthma Network, Inc. (MCAN), the nation's only organization focused solely on childhood asthma.

3 Mar 2012

Scientists determine chemical features of DHPS enzyme's active site

More than 70 years after the first sulfa drugs helped to revolutionize medical care and save millions of lives, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have determined at an atomic level the mechanism these medications use to kill bacteria. The discovery provides the basis for a new generation of antibiotics that would likely be harder for bacteria to resist and cause fewer side effects.

2 Mar 2012

U.S. panel may re-evaluate bird flu research after scientists present new data about risks to humans

Speaking at the American Society for Microbiology's (ASM) Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research meeting in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Ron Fouchier, the leader of the team at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands that genetically altered the H5N1 bird flu virus, making it transmissible among ferrets and "touching off public fears of a pandemic, said that the virus he created was neither as contagious nor as dangerous as people had been led to believe, prompting the United States government to ask that the experiments be re-evaluated by a government advisory panel that recommended in December that certain details of the work be kept secret and not published," the New York Times reports.

1 Mar 2012

New portable device can quickly diagnose infectious disease

Infectious diseases can spread very rapidly, so quickly identifying them can be crucial to stopping an epidemic. However, current testing for such diseases can take hours and days. But not for much longer.

1 Mar 2012

FDA approves MedImmune's FluMist Quadrivalent vaccine

MedImmune today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved FluMist Quadrivalent (Influenza Vaccine Live, Intranasal) for prevention of influenza.

29 Feb 2012

HIV treatment to be extended to asylum seekers in UK

Now foreign nationals are to be offered free treatment for HIV under the NHS under plans backed by the government. Campaigners say the move in England will reduce the risk of Britons being infected and cut the costs of more expensive later treatment. Currently only British residents are eligible, which excludes migrants.

29 Feb 2012

Breakthrough discovery about Rhizobium radiobacter

A new discovery involving two Simon Fraser University scientists could lead to a little known and benign bacterium becoming a vital new tool in the development of a vaccine against human immunodeficiency virus.

29 Feb 2012

WUSM to study children with weakened immune systems

Not all viruses make us sick. But which ones are friends and which ones are foes? Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a five-year, $3.3 million grant to study children with weakened immune systems to identify the viruses that make children sick.

29 Feb 2012