Infectious Diseases News and Research

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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

Genome sequencing helps characterize S. aureus ST398-NM strain

Using genome sequencing and household surveillance, National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists and their colleagues from Columbia University Medical Center and St. George's University of London have pieced together how a newly emerging type of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria has adapted to transmit more easily among humans.

29 Feb 2012

IDWeek 2012 to take place October 17-21 in San Diego

Abstracts are now being accepted for IDWeek 2012, the first-ever combined meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA), and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS).

29 Feb 2012

HPV vaccine now recommended for boys: American Academy of Pediatrics

Pediatricians in the U.S. say it's now time for boys, as well as girls, to be vaccinated against human papillomavirus or HPV. The American Academy of Pediatrics has updated its guidance to parents and doctors in favor of routine immunization for boys against the virus. Earlier the AAP had said it was OK to vaccinate boys against the HPV, but it only became part of the pediatricians' official schedule of recommended vaccines this month.

28 Feb 2012

Scientists discover new pathway necessary for infection to occur with N. gonorrhoeae

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have for the first time identified a novel pathway that is necessary for infection to occur with the pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which is responsible for the second most common infectious disease worldwide, gonorrhea.

28 Feb 2012

FDA clears Meridian Bioscience's TRU Legionella test

Meridian Bioscience, Inc. today announced that it has received FDA clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for TRU Legionella, a new rapid assay for detection of legionellosis.

28 Feb 2012

USPTO issues two patents on 'Novel Shigella protein antigens and methods' to IVI

The International Vaccine Institute (IVI), an international organization based in Seoul devoted to research on the development and introduction of vaccines for the developing world, reached a milestone in its aim to prevent and control dysentery (also commonly called shigellosis or bloody diarrhea), a deadly disease that affects several million people worldwide.

27 Feb 2012

BioConnections, Yissum to commercialize kits that detect MDR and XDR infections

Yissum, the research and development company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had signed a licensing agreement with BioConnections, a UK based microbiology company, for the commercialization of kits that enables immediate detection of all multidrug resistant (MDR) and of any extremely drug resistant (XDR) infections.

27 Feb 2012

Bird flu may be more common and less deadly: Study finds

The H5N1 influenza virus commonly called “bird flu” or “avian flu” could be more prevalent and less deadly than health officials had thought, according to a new study published online (Feb. 23) by the journal Science.

26 Feb 2012

Researchers begin clinical trial of first visceral leishmaniasis vaccine

"Researchers say they've developed the first vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) -- a disease that affects 500,000 people each year and has been called the 'parasitic version of HIV,'" although the diseases are unrelated, U.S. News reports.

24 Feb 2012

Article in journal Science proposes new look on killer diseases

The immune system protects from infections by detecting and eliminating invading pathogens. These two strategies form the basis of conventional clinical approaches in the fight against infectious diseases.

24 Feb 2012

MRSA strain in food animals concerns experts

The strain of staph, known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA CC398, most often infects farm workers who come in contact with infected pigs, turkeys, or cows. Now the strain of bacteria has been found in about half of meat samples taken throughout the country. The researchers say that the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in livestock used for food is to blame for the infection's drug resistance.

23 Feb 2012

Studies provide global perspective on condom use problems and errors

Problems with the correct use of the male condom, such as not wearing a condom throughout sex or putting it on upside down, are common in the U.S. and have become a major concern of public health officials. New research shows that countries around the world are facing similar challenges.

23 Feb 2012