Disease/Infection News

RSS

More than 15000 health-care facilities to participate in WHO Save Lives: Clean Your Hands Initiative

On Hand Hygiene Day (5 May), more than 15 000 health-care facilities from 156 countries are participating in the WHO Save Lives: Clean Your Hands Initiative by committing to improve patient safety by practicing better hand hygiene.

5 May 2012

Nature publishes first of two controversial studies on H5N1 avian flu

"In a long-awaited study that helped prompt a contentious debate over the wisdom of conducting research that has the potential to help as well as harm, scientists reported Wednesday that they had engineered a mutant strain of [H5N1] bird flu that can spread easily between ferrets -- a laboratory animal that responds to flu viruses much as people do," the Los Angeles Times (Brown, 5/3).

4 May 2012

An Achilles heel within cells that bacteria exploit to cause infection

Scientists have discovered an Achilles heel within our cells that bacteria are able to exploit to cause and spread infection.

4 May 2012

One of the controversial avian flu studies published in full finally

After endless debates and controversies on whether two studies that demonstrated how bird flu, also known as avian H5N1 influenza, or avian flu, should be published, one of them has appeared in the latest issue of the journal Nature in its entirety. The two studies aimed for publication in journals Nature and Science show how the bird flu virus could become transmissible from mammal-to-mammal; as humans are mammals, the same would apply to humans.

4 May 2012

HIV/AIDS funding does not undermine efforts to fight other diseases, study suggests

"While the battle against HIV/AIDS attracts more donor funding globally than all other diseases combined, it has not diverted attention from fighting unrelated afflictions -- such as malaria, measles and malnutrition -- and may be improving health services overall in targeted countries, according to a study on Rwanda published" Wednesday in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, an American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) press release reports.

4 May 2012

Chagas disease especially harmful for expectant mothers; New, better treatments needed

"Chagas disease -- a parasitic infection transmitted through an insect commonly known as the 'kissing bug' -- is one of the most common infections among pregnant women in the Western Hemisphere," Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and director of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, writes in the Huffington Post's "Global Motherhood" blog.

4 May 2012

UCLA creates crowd-sourced online gaming system to detect malaria

Online crowd-sourcing - in which a task is presented to the public, who respond, for free, with various solutions and suggestions - has been used to evaluate potential consumer products, develop software algorithms and solve vexing research-and-development challenges. But diagnosing infectious diseases?

4 May 2012

GenVec receives NIAID’s Phase I SBIR grant to support RSV vaccine program

GenVec, Inc. announced today that it has received a Phase I Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support the Company's Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine program.

4 May 2012

E coli detection in contaminated meat to be ‘sped up’ says USDA

The government is gearing up to speed up the process for tracking E. coli in meat, a move that will help authorities more quickly find the source of bacteria outbreaks and hasten recalls of contaminated food.

3 May 2012

Lyme can infect Texas public, alerts TXLDA

Thousands of Texans have Lyme disease, yet Texas patients are still being told there is no Lyme disease in Texas. To address this problem, the Texas Lyme Disease Association (TXLDA) has commissioned its first public service announcement to alert the Texas public that Lyme can infect them and their families.

3 May 2012

AIDS, health groups submit comments to FDA prior to agency's review of PrEP

"In public comments submitted this week, a group of 14 leading HIV/AIDS and health organizations stated their support for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate [TDF/FTC] ... as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent HIV infection in adult men and women," a press release from AVAC: Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention states.

3 May 2012

Novel stem cell transplantation holds promise for HIV prevention

UC Davis Health System researchers are a step closer to launching human clinical trials involving the use of an innovative stem cell therapy to fight the virus that causes AIDS.

3 May 2012

Europe becoming 'hotspot' for emerging infections, study suggests

"Europe is becoming a 'hotspot' for emerging infections as those typically confined to tropical climates are making their way north, according to research that links climate change to the global spread of disease," the Financial Times reports.

3 May 2012

Researchers to examine how climate change may affect humans, societies

A new grant to awarded George Mason University's Center for Social Complexity will allow researchers to examine how climate change may affect humans and societies over the next 100 years.

3 May 2012

Treatment as Prevention conference late breaker session presentations

The Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog rounds up results presented at a late breaker session at last week's 2nd International Treatment as Prevention Workshop in Vancouver. The blog notes the session "offered some interesting insights relevant to HIV treatment scale up."

3 May 2012

U.S. to ask university officials how best to implement new DURC policy

"The U.S. government will soon be asking university officials to comment on how best to implement recently released dual use research rules at the university level," according to Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who spoke Monday at a workshop sponsored by the National Academies in Washington, ScienceInsider reports.

3 May 2012

Global Fund completes reorganization of workforce, tightens focus to 20 'high-impact countries'

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria "is cutting its workforce and tightening its focus on 20 countries hardest hit by AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria," Reuters reports. Gabriel Jaramillo, who took over as general manager of the fund in January, "said in a statement that the fund had completed a reorganization that would rebalance its workforce with 39 percent more people managing grants and 38 percent fewer in support roles," the news service notes.

3 May 2012

African-Americans with HIV less likely to adhere to ART therapy

African-Americans with HIV are much less likely to adhere to drug therapy than others with the disease, according to a University of Michigan study.

3 May 2012

Roundup: Mass. health cost control bill could save $8B to $34B; Md. weighs hospital rate freeze; Iowa Senate passes a fix for HIV insurance program

As Massachusetts' state legislators put the finishing touches on a major health care cost-control bill, there is still one big question: How much could it save? A recent report claims employers and employees could see between $8 billion and $34.5 billion in savings over nine years.

3 May 2012

Flu paper publication amidst threats of bioterrorism raises need for better rules of censorship

According to the editor of the scientific journal Nature, Dr Philip Campbell current procedures to assess and censor medical research potentially of use to terrorists need to be improved. He was speaking about the recent controversy regarding the bird flu virus H5N1 study. The study was initially stopped from publication fearing risk of bioterrorism. He was speaking to BBC News.

2 May 2012