Disease/Infection News

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Vaccine confidence: an interview with Dr Heidi Larson

Here at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine we are running a project called the Vaccine Confidence Project and we have a global surveillance monitoring information around the world on media, social media, all sorts of information, reports from governments, UN, other sources, looking for any what we call “signals” of public distrust or concerns that come up.

30 Jan 2013

Scientists study waves of influenza and climate patterns in the U.S. from 1997-1998

The American public can expect to add earlier and more severe flu seasons to the fallout from climate change, according to a research study published online Jan. 28 in PLOS Currents: Influenza.

30 Jan 2013

Dilaforette receives approval to initiate sevuparin Phase II malaria study in India

Dilaforette, a Karolinska Development portfolio company, today announces that the company has approval from the regulatory authority in India to start a Phase II study with sevuparin in patients with moderate to severe malaria.

30 Jan 2013

HIV/AIDS Legal Assessment Tool aims to tackle HIV-related discrimination

Writing in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog, Jennifer James, founder of Mom Bloggers for Social Good, examines the HIV/AIDS Legal Assessment Tool created by the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative.

30 Jan 2013

Research to encourage more effective and efficient management of water resources

Born and raised in a rural village in Northern Ghana, Dr. Braimah Apambire knows the value of resources in a critically deprived country.

30 Jan 2013

Blog examines next steps should a therapeutic AIDS vaccine be developed

In a post in the "Tomorrow Global" blog, Danielle Parsons, an HIV/AIDS specialist, highlights a number of advances made in the search for an AIDS vaccine, writing, "All of this work is promising, and it's starting to feel like we're back on track for a successful therapeutic vaccine in the next decade."

30 Jan 2013

New clue to why some people fight infections better than others

As influenza spreads through the northern hemisphere winter, Dr Linda Wakim and her colleagues in the Laboratory of Professor Jose Villadangos from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, believe they have a new clue to why some people fight infections better than others.

30 Jan 2013

U.S. Supreme Court should end 'counterproductive' federal anti-prostitution pledge

In the Huffington Post's "Politics" blog, journalist and author John-Manuel Andriote notes the U.S. Supreme Court this month agreed to hear a case challenging the federal anti-prostitution pledge, which requires groups that receive federal funding for overseas HIV/AIDS programs to sign a pledge denouncing prostitution and sex trafficking as a condition for receiving funding, and describes the history of the policy.

30 Jan 2013

HIV-positive patients have higher incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers

HIV-positive patients have a higher incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that appears in the current online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Specifically, basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas occur more than twice as often among HIV-positive individuals compared to those who are HIV-negative.

30 Jan 2013

Low-income and minority parents/guardians receptive toward vaccinating boys against HPV

A new Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) study has found that low-income and minority parents/guardians were receptive toward vaccinating boys against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). However, racial/ethnic differences emerged in attitudes regarding school-entry mandates. The findings appear online in the journal Clinical Pediatrics.

30 Jan 2013

Cambodian health officials strengthen avian flu awareness campaigns after 2 more deaths

"Two more children have died in Cambodia of bird flu, bringing the number of fatal cases this year to four and the number of cases overall to five," the Associated Press/Wall Street Journal reports, noting only three cases were reported in all of 2012. "WHO says bird flu, also known as avian influenza, or H5N1, has killed 360 other people worldwide since surfacing in 2003," with most cases "linked to contact with infected poultry," the news agency writes.

30 Jan 2013

Researchers identify mechanism by which S. aureus colonises nasal passages

A collaboration between researchers at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology and the Department of Microbiology at Trinity College Dublin has identified a mechanism by which the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) colonises our nasal passages.

29 Jan 2013

Have scientists thoroughly addressed avian flu research concerns?

Noting that a nearly yearlong moratorium on H5N1 avian influenza research, put in place "because of safety and terrorism concerns," was lifted recently, a New York Times editorial states, "We wish we could be as sanguine as they are that all the earlier concerns have been dealt with."

29 Jan 2013

Polio eradication must fit into larger public health, development goals

"The tragic murders of nine anti-polio workers in Pakistan last month, followed by the New Year's Day killing of seven more local community development workers, was both a wake-up call to the global polio eradication effort in its current form, and a 'canary in the mine' regarding the deteriorating state of development and security in the country," Heidi Larson, a senior lecturer and principal investigator at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, writes in a SciDev.Net opinion piece.

29 Jan 2013

Focus water, sanitation investments on cholera risk zones, aid groups say

"Aid groups are urging donors to invest in water and sanitation in areas known as hotbeds for cholera," saying "while such projects might directly affect a relatively small population, the indirect impact in terms of cholera reduction could be immense," IRIN reports.

29 Jan 2013

New tweet-screening method effectively tracks flu cases

Sifting through social media messages has become a popular way to track when and where flu cases occur, but a key hurdle hampers the process: how to identify flu-infection tweets. Some tweets are posted by people who have been sick with the virus, while others come from folks who are merely talking about the illness. If you are tracking actual flu cases, such conversations about the flu in general can skew the results.

29 Jan 2013

Common myths about flu from Mayo Clinic

It seems you can't go anywhere these days without hearing "the flu this" or "the flu that." Unfortunately, this season's influenza outbreak is one of the worst in years. And it's not just the flu virus that's causing problems; there are also many myths about the flu that are keeping people from doing more to prevent it.

29 Jan 2013

Blue light can selectively eradicate skin and soft tissue infections

Blue light can selectively eradicate Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections of the skin and soft tissues, while preserving the outermost layer of skin, according to a proof-of-principle study led by Michael R. Hamblin of the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Harvard Medical School, Boston.

29 Jan 2013

WHO Executive Board meeting discusses consensus on R&D for neglected diseases

Intellectual Property Watch reports on discussions at the ongoing WHO Executive Board meeting "over legal and political aspects of a consensus reached by a small number of member states in November on implementing a plan to address the global lack of research and development [R&D] for neglected diseases predominantly afflicting poor populations."

29 Jan 2013

1 in 5 people infected with swine flu during first year of epidemic, WHO-led study shows

"At least one in five people worldwide were infected with swine flu during the first year of the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic, an international research group said on Friday, but the death rate was just 0.02 percent," Reuters reports.

29 Jan 2013