Infectious Diseases News and Research

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Infant transplant patients resist infections that kill adult AIDS patients - possible new treatments for debilitating diseases

Investigators have discovered that some type of protective system goes into action in some cases when a baby's immune system is deficient.

7 Feb 2006

Doctors' conscience has little place in the delivery of modern medical care

A doctor's conscience should not be allowed to interfere with medical care, argues an ethics expert in the British Medical Journal.

7 Feb 2006

Rotavirus vaccine will protect children against a major killer worldwide

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced the licensing of a new vaccine against a disease responsible for tens of thousands of hospitalizations in the United States and hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world each year.

7 Feb 2006

Controlling neglected diseases will boost fight against HIV, TB and Malaria

Achieving success in the global fight against the "big three" diseases - HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which together account for 5.6 million deaths a year - may well require a concurrent attack on the world’s most neglected tropical diseases, says a team of researchers in the international open access journal PLoS Medicine.

2 Feb 2006

Virus could mean obesity is contagious

According to researchers in the U.S., a virus may be why some people are obese.

30 Jan 2006

HIV testing and counseling reduces high-risk sexual behavior and prevents HIV transmission in Tanzania

Offering free HIV tests instead of charging a small fee is more cost-effective at preventing HIV infections and draws in three times as many people for testing, according to a Duke University Medical Center study conducted in Tanzania.

27 Jan 2006

First large-scale bird flu genome study

Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have completed the first large-scale study of bird flu virus genomes, thereby doubling the amount of genetic information available on the genes and proteins of these viruses.

26 Jan 2006

Study estimates 500,000 fatalities from bird flu pandemic outbreak in Japan

Risk Management Solutions, Inc. (RMS) released the findings of an in-depth study that provides life and personal accident insurers in Japan with key benchmarks for the potential risk of human casualties from catastrophic events.

26 Jan 2006

Identity Swap: Finding the variants that human history has favoured

Sequence differences in less than 0.2% of the 3-billion-base human genome play a vital role in a bewildering variety of human disease. Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Cambridge University’s Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, together with international colleagues report in PLoS Genetics their detailed maps of differences implicated in disease as well as genes that are unchanged in recent human history.

26 Jan 2006

Follow the money trail to track the disease

It seems that a popular Web site in the United States that tracks the geographical circulation of money could cast new light on predicting where infectious diseases like bird flu might pop up.

26 Jan 2006

Injection no better than a placebo at preventing influenza in children

U.S. health authorities should have waited for more evidence before recommending routine flu shots for healthy toddlers, according to a new systematic review of studies involving half a million children worldwide.

25 Jan 2006

Breakthrough in lupus research

A major breakthrough in lupus research - one that may fundamentally change thinking on how the disease affects behavior and cognition - was reported in the January 17, 2006 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

25 Jan 2006

Avian influenza could have disastrous effects on countries' economies, infrastructures, populations, public health and stability

In the past, when government leaders, policymakers and scholars have turned their attention to peace and security issues, the talk invariably has focused on war, arms control or anti-terrorism strategies. But Julian Palmore believes it's time to expand the scope of the conversation.

25 Jan 2006

Guidelines for International Breast Health and Cancer Control

Specific recommendations for improving breast-health care and cancer treatment in countries with limited resources have been published by the Breast Health Global Initiative (BHGI), an international coalition of doctors, scientists, policy makers and advocates led by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

25 Jan 2006

Morphotek issued patent covering the use of chemical inhibitors of mismatch repair

Morphotek Inc. announced today the issuance of United States Patent 6,982,169 covering the use of chemical inhibitors to enhance evolution of target host cell genomes by reversibly regulating mismatch repair (MMR) in vivo.

23 Jan 2006

Preparing for bird flu

When a new strain of flu infects people, the infection can spread around the world quickly. This is what could potentially happen with some new human flu viruses that come from bird flu viruses.

18 Jan 2006

Genetic risk factor for West Nile virus infection identified

People who lack a cell surface protein called CCR5 are highly resistant to infection by HIV but may be at increased risk of developing West Nile virus (WNV) illness when exposed to the mosquito-borne virus, report researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

18 Jan 2006