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MSF says additional resources needed to improve ART access in Burma

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the largest provider of antiretroviral treatment (ART) in Burma, also known as Myanmar, are calling for the gap between the need for and access to ART in the country to be closed, the Guardian reports.

11 May 2012

Nepalese government launches 'ambitious' plan to end malaria, IRIN reports

"The Nepalese government has launched an ambitious plan to curb the spread of malaria in high-risk parts of the country, where some 3,000 people were infected last year," IRIN reports. Through the program, which began on May 1 and "is the first nationwide push to end malaria," the "health ministry will distribute [anti-malarial] drugs at their local offices, and through their representatives in rural areas," IRIN writes.

11 May 2012

RNP granules exit the nucleus via new budding mechanism akin to herpes-type viruses

New evidence published in Cell by Vivian Budnik, PhD, Melissa J. Moore, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, reveals a novel budding mechanism, similar to the process used by some viruses, capable of exporting large ribonucleoprotein particles from the nucleus to the cytoplasm.

11 May 2012

Efforts to stem childhood mortality in Ghana will not be enough to reach MDG, UNICEF official says

Anirban Chatterjee, chief of health and nutrition for UNICEF in Ghana, said the country "is doing a lot" to fight child mortality -- referring to a recently launched vaccination campaign and an initiative to educate mothers about nutrition -- but "I don't think it's enough" to reach the fourth U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two thirds by 2015, Inter Press Service reports.

11 May 2012

FDA ADAC recommends approval of Gilead’s Truvada for HIV

Gilead Sciences, Inc. today announced that the Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has voted to support approval of once-daily oral Truvada(emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) to reduce the risk of HIV-1 infection among uninfected adults, an HIV prevention strategy called pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP.

11 May 2012

Trovagene receives European patent titled, ‘Methods for Detection of Nucleic Acid Sequences in Urine’

Trovagene, Inc., a developer of trans-renal molecular diagnostics, announced it has received notice of issuance of European Patent No. 2216416 entitled "Methods for Detection of Nucleic Acid Sequences in Urine."

11 May 2012

USAID launches five-year initiative in Nigeria to strengthen HIV, TB services

U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Terence McCulley on Tuesday in Abuja, Nigeria, launched a five-year, $224 million USAID program, titled Strengthening Integrated Delivery of HIV/AIDS Services (SIDHAS), that aims to "increase access to high-quality comprehensive HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis prevention, treatment, care and related services through improved efficiencies in service delivery," the Daily Trust reports.

10 May 2012

Hospital midwife inadvertently spreads whooping cough to up to 170 people

A Middlemore Hospital midwife could have infected up to 170 people with whooping cough. If passed onto babies or women in the last three months of pregnancy, the disease can lead to severe illness or even death. Whooping cough is a highly infectious disease caused by bacteria which is easily spread through coughing and sneezing, much like the common cold. Also known as pertussis, it is distinguishable by a “whooping” sound at the end of coughing attacks.

10 May 2012

Leishmaniasis vaccine trial begins in U.S., India

"A vaccine against one of the most neglected yet fatal tropical diseases is being tested for the first time in a clinical trial in India and the U.S.," IRIN reports. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), "also called kala-azar or black fever, infects an estimated half million persons or more annually," and "it is found most commonly in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Brazil and Sudan," the news service notes.

10 May 2012

Report identifies challenges, solutions to increasing routine vaccination in Nigeria

In this post in PSI's "Healthy Lives" blog, Deputy Editor Tom Murphy examines routine vaccination solutions in Nigeria, where "the Decade of Vaccines Economics projects 90 percent vaccine coverage against Hib, pneumococcal disease, rotavirus, measles and pertussis can save 600,000 lives and $17 billion in Nigeria over the next 10 years."

10 May 2012

UNAIDS launches campaign aimed at ending new HIV infections among children by 2015

UNAIDS on Tuesday launched a new campaign "aimed at ending new HIV infections among children by 2015 and ensuring mothers living with HIV remain healthy," Xinhua reports.

10 May 2012

Treatable infections responsible for nearly 2M cases of cancer globally each year, study suggests

"Bacteria, viruses and parasites cause around two million cases of cancer in the world each year, experts believe," the Press Association/Guardian reports. According to the news service, "Scientists carried out a statistical analysis of cancer incidence to calculate that around 16 percent of all cancers diagnosed in 2008 were infection-related," and "the proportion of cancers linked to infection was three times higher in developing countries than in developed ones."

10 May 2012

Arthritis rates set to soar

According to new estimates the number of people with arthritis is set to soar with predictions that 1,500,000 Scots will be living with the condition by 2030.

10 May 2012

Examining the need for WHO today

Responding to an opinion piece published in Nature Medicine last week in which Tikki Pang, a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore and former director of research policy and cooperation at the WHO, and Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, argue the case for reforming and improving the WHO, KPLU's Tom Paulson writes in a post on KPLU 88.5's "Humanosphere" blog.

10 May 2012

NCATS initiative to use abandoned experimental drugs for other uses 'a step in the right direction'

The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) -- a new plan to help speed drug development by making abandoned experimental drugs available to researchers who can look for alternative uses -- "is an indication that the Obama administration and the medical research enterprise are thinking out of the box," Michael Manganiello, a partner at HCM Strategists, writes in a Huffington Post "Politics Blog" opinion piece.

10 May 2012

Researchers use clever screening methods to speed vaccine production

Infectious diseases-both old and new-continue to exact a devastating toll, causing some 13 million fatalities per year around the world. Vaccines remain the best line of defense against deadly pathogens and now Kathryn Sykes and Stephen Johnston, researchers at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, along with co-author Michael McGuire from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center are using clever functional screening methods to attempt to speed new vaccines into production that are both safer and more potent.

10 May 2012

ACOEM honors JNJ with 2012 Corporate Health Achievement Award

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) the world's most comprehensive and broadly based manufacturer of health care products, as well as a provider of related services for the consumer and pharmaceutical and medical devices and diagnostics markets, has been awarded the 2012 Corporate Health Achievement Award (CHAA) by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

10 May 2012

IDRI, Aeras partner to develop new TB vaccine candidate

Aeras and the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) announce today a new agreement to conduct joint development activities with respect to IDRI's novel tuberculosis vaccine candidate. This collaboration reflects the missions of the two non-profit product development partnerships to use cutting-edge science to develop products that address critical diseases of underserved populations around the world, including tuberculosis.

10 May 2012

G&D, IAVI and GMI partner to develop new HIV/AIDS vaccine

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), GlycoMimetics, Inc. (GMI), and Glycosensors and Diagnostics, LLC (G&D) today announced a collaboration to develop an AIDS vaccine using novel compounds that mimic carbohydrates, called glycomimetics.

10 May 2012

MSU researcher wins Grand Challenges Explorations grant for work on TB

For his work on developing new treatments for tuberculosis, a Michigan State University researcher has been named a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

10 May 2012