Infectious Diseases News and Research

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U.K. government to increase NTD spending fivefold between 2011 and 2015

"The U.K. government has announced a fivefold increase in spending on combating neglected tropical diseases [NTDs] as part of an international effort to help rid the world of a group of infectious diseases that currently affect one billion people and kill more than half a million every year," BMJ reports.

25 Jan 2012

Only one in five young adults received a swine flu shot during 2009-2010 epidemic

Only about one in five young adults in their late 30s received a flu shot during the 2009-2010 swine flu epidemic, according to a University of Michigan report that details the behavior and attitudes of Generation X.

25 Jan 2012

OraQuick HIV1/2 test as accurate as traditional blood test

A saliva test used to diagnose the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), is comparable in accuracy to the traditional blood test, according to a new study led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and McGill University.

25 Jan 2012

Johnson & Johnson fourth quarter sales increase 3.9% to $16.3 billion

Johnson & Johnson today announced sales of $16.3 billion for the fourth quarter of 2011, an increase of 3.9% as compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. Operational sales increased 4.0% and the negative impact of currency was 0.1%.

24 Jan 2012

Scientists halt bird flu research for 60 days amid safety concerns

The head of the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which funded "two projects that created a highly pathogenic [H5N1] flu virus mutation, has welcomed a two-month moratorium on further research while defending the value and safety of the experiments," the Financial Times reports.

24 Jan 2012

Elderly patients more likely to develop respiratory or gastrointestinal infections after ED visits

Elderly patients who have visited an emergency department (ED) are three times more likely to develop respiratory or gastrointestinal infections in the week following their return to a long-term care facility, such as a Centre d'H-bergement de Soins de Longue Dur-e.

24 Jan 2012

Lab21 acquires new real time PCR technology

Lab21 Limited, the global specialist in personalized medicine and clinical diagnostics, today announces the completion of a worldwide license from Cooperative Diagnostics to use its suite of patents and expertise for the development of its growing pipeline of molecular diagnostic kits. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

23 Jan 2012

Duke team creates vaccine adjuvant of nanoparticles that target lymph nodes

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have created synthetic nanoparticles that target lymph nodes and greatly boost vaccine responses, said lead author Ashley St. John, Ph.D., a researcher at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School.

23 Jan 2012

Retail pork products in the U.S. have higher prevalence of MRSA bacteria

Retail pork products in the U.S. have a higher prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (MRSA) than previously identified, according to new research by the University of Iowa College of Public Health and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

20 Jan 2012

Shortages of anti-infective drugs can put patients at risk and alter clinical care

Shortages of key drugs used to fight infections represent a public health emergency and can put patients at risk, according to a review published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online.

20 Jan 2012

Risks of modifying flu strains to become highly transmissible in humans outweigh benefits

In this Journal Sentinel Online opinion piece, Thomas Inglesby, chief executive officer and director of the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC in Baltimore; Anita Cicero, chief operating officer and deputy director of the center; and D.A. Henderson, a distinguished scholar at the center, comment on a recent announcement by scientists that they have genetically modified a strain of H5N1 bird flu that is "capable of spreading through the air between ferrets that were physically separated from each other," indicating "it would be readily transmissible by air between humans."

19 Jan 2012

Bristol-Myers Squibb agrees purchase of Inhibitex for $2.5Bn

American pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb has agreed the purchase of US biotech company Inhibitex, in a $2.5Bn (£1.6bn) deal which includes the promising new anti-hepatitis C drug INX-189, first designed and prepared in Cardiff University.

19 Jan 2012

Alpha-hemolysin may play an unexpected role in UTIs

Researchers from the University of Utah have identified a process by which the most common types of urinary tract infection-causing bacteria are able to trigger bladder cell shedding and disable immune responses. According to this new study, published in the Jan. 19, 2012, issue of Cell Host & Microbe, α-hemolysin, a toxin secreted by many strains of Escherichia coli (E. coli), may play an important, unexpected role during both the establishment and persistence of urinary tract infections.

19 Jan 2012

Researchers to anticipate and track risk for infectious disease outbreak at London Olympics

A research team led by St. Michael's Hospital's Dr. Kamran Khan is teaming up with British authorities to anticipate and track the risk for an infectious disease outbreak at the London Olympics this summer.

18 Jan 2012

U.S. to provide nearly $1B over five years to Bangladesh for poverty, health, agriculture programs

A U.S. Embassy statement on Saturday said the U.S. would provide nearly $1 billion to Bangladesh over the next five years "towards alleviating poverty and malnutrition, as well as family planning and the fight against infectious diseases," Reuters reports.

18 Jan 2012

Totally drug resistant Tuberculosis hits India

Reports reveal that nearly a dozen people in India are infected with a type of tuberculosis that is resistant to all antibiotics used to treat the disease and is thus named “totally drug resistant” or TDR tuberculosis.

17 Jan 2012

New way to block HCV infection in the liver

Researchers at the University of British Columbia have found a new way to block infection from the hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the liver that could lead to new therapies for those affected by this and other infectious diseases.

17 Jan 2012

Suing others for spread of disease ignores dynamics of infectious disease

In this post in the Center for Global Development's (CGD) "Global Health Policy" blog, Victoria Fan, a research fellow at the CGD, and Richard Cash, senior lecturer on global health at the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Global Health and Population, report on a lawsuit brought forth against the U.N. on behalf of some of Haiti's 15,000 cholera victims.

13 Jan 2012

Non-toxin vaccine shows promise against lethal anthrax infection

Vaccination with the anthrax capsule-a naturally occurring component of the bacterium that causes the disease-protected monkeys from lethal anthrax infection, according to U.S. Army scientists. The study, which appears in the Jan. 20th print edition of the journal VACCINE, represents the first successful use of a non-toxin vaccine to protect monkeys from the disease.

13 Jan 2012

CrystalGenomics raises KRW 3 billion in private placement

CrystalGenomics, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Korea, has just announced that it has successfully raised KRW 3 Billion (USD 2.6 Million) in a private placement to the Korea Seoul Life Science Fund.

13 Jan 2012