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Infectious diseases pose a serious threat to the nation's public health

Infectious diseases pose a serious threat to the nation's public health. Today, experts addressed key developments to the current and future outlook of infectious diseases, highlighting adolescent immunizations, outbreaks and epidemics of infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance and new developments in HIV medicine, at a press conference sponsored by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID).

27 Jul 2005

Pig disease in China now claims 24 lives and renders 117 sick

The death toll from an outbreak, of what is now thought to be a pig-borne disease, in the southwest Chinese province of Sichuan, has risen to 24, with another 117 thought be sick.

27 Jul 2005

Biota's potential damages claim against GlaxoSmithKline could be as high as $430 million

Biota Holdings Limited of Melbourne, Australia, has announced its Particulars of Loss and Damage in its suit against GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for failing to support Biota’s influenza drug, Relenza. The damages assessment was filed with the Victorian Supreme Court and estimates Biota’s losses in the range of $308 million to $430 million.

26 Jul 2005

Bird flu could spread to Europe on wings of Asian wild geese

Migratory wild birds from China, which were found to have contracted bird flu from poultry, could potentially spread the disease to Europe, as well as Australia, Chinese scientists report.

26 Jul 2005

First large-scale effort to sequence the flu genome

Multiple strains of the flu virus, circulating in a population at the same time, can reshuffle their genes and create a new virus, one capable of infecting many more people, according to a new study in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.

26 Jul 2005

Models may risk making overly optimistic predictions about the levels of public health interventions needed to bring a disease under control

Mathematical models have become invaluable decision-making tools for public health officials. As demonstrated during the United Kingdom's foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001, models can be useful in two ways: they can reveal the underlying characteristics of an infection and they can allow the comparison of alternative control measures.

26 Jul 2005

Nearly half of New Yorkers ages 50 and older are not undergoing screening within the recommended schedule

Half of New York City residents over 50, the age at which the American Cancer Society recommends beginning screening tests, have not received a colon cancer-screening test within the recommended time intervals, according to a new study.

25 Jul 2005

Seventeen now dead from mystery disease in southwest China

The state media in China says that a mysterious disease has now killed 17 farm workers and left 41 others sick, in southwest China, after they handled sick or dead livestock.

25 Jul 2005

Brits stockpiling bird flu vaccine

A stockpile of 2 million doses of vaccine to fight the H5N1 strain of Asian bird flu will be accumulated by the British government.

21 Jul 2005

For influenza experts, the question is not whether the world is going to have a new flu pandemic, but when

This isn't easy to communicate to the public. Bird flu and the potential for a human flu pandemic have been making headlines in recent weeks, but the subject presents more uncertainties than certainties.

19 Jul 2005

U.S. stockpile of anti-flu drugs is "totally inadequate"

The United States does not have nearly enough antiviral drugs on hand to fight a coming influenza pandemic, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

19 Jul 2005

'Big Gun' government official needed to oversee U.S. animal disease programs

A National Academy of Sciences panel has said this week that one high ranking government official may be the best way to consolidate U.S. animal disease oversights in order to protect consumers from mad cow disease, bird flu and other serious animal ailments that can jump species.

19 Jul 2005

Ducks possibly the culprit in spreading bird flu

An international team, which included experts from China, Indonesia, Thailand, the US and Vietnam, say that domestic ducks possibly pose a major threat of spreading avian flu to animals and humans, as not only do they carry the virus with few visible signs, the virus is able to mutate in them, which means they could trigger a human pandemic.

19 Jul 2005

Tamiflu may treat avian flu virus

Experiments in mice show that an antiviral drug currently used against annual influenza strains also can suppress the deadly influenza virus that has spread from birds to humans, killing dozens of people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand since early 2004.

18 Jul 2005

Targeted program drastically reduced hepatitis A in U.S.

According to a newly released study, the number of cases of hepatitis A have fallen by 76 percent in the United States since a vaccination campaign targeted children in communities with the highest rates of the disease.

13 Jul 2005

ID Biomedical's flu vaccine granted fast track status

ID Biomedical Corporation announced today it has been advised by the United States Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) that the Company's Influenza Virus Vaccine (Fluviral) has been granted a Fast Track designation.

13 Jul 2005

Research explains one of the fundamental mysteries of multiple sclerosis

Scientists have pinpointed a chemical messenger that frees some white blood cells from the body's normal constraints, allowing the cells to act like renegades that could damage nerves in the central nervous system. The work, to be published in the July 15 issue of the Journal of Immunology and just published on-line, helps explain one of the fundamental mysteries of multiple sclerosis (MS).

11 Jul 2005