Disease/Infection News

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N.Y. State Department of Health releases 2010 report on hospital infection rates

For the third year in a row, Hospital for Special Surgery is the only hospital in New York State with an infection rate that is significantly lower than the state average for hip replacement or revision surgeries, according to the 2010 report on hospital infection rates just released by the State Department of Health.

26 Sep 2011

Exposure to goats could increase risk of pneumonic-type lung adenocarcinoma

Exposure to goats could increase the risk of a certain type of lung cancer, according to French researchers.

26 Sep 2011

Sodium Stibogluconate & Paromomycin combination treatment for Kala azar

East Africa is fighting the worst kala azar outbreak in a decade. Collaboration across the region through the Leishmaniasis East Africa Platform (LEAP) has resulted in the development of a new combination therapy (SSG&PM) which is cheaper and nearly halves the length of treatment from a 30 day course of injections to 17 days.

26 Sep 2011

Britain’s health workers urged to get flu shots to protect patients

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is urging its staff to take their flu shots amid fresh warnings that low vaccination rates among health professionals could lead to vulnerable patients getting infected and dying. The NHS's employers, health trade unions and the Department of Health have launched a campaign to tackle low immunization rates among frontline staff such as doctors and nurses.

26 Sep 2011

Rotavirus vaccine saved 65,000 hospitalizations and $278 million in healthcare costs: Study

The latest research shows that since the 2006 introduction of routine inoculation against rotavirus -- a leading cause of diarrhea in infants and young children -- almost 65,000 fewer American children have been hospitalized and about $278 million in healthcare costs have been saved.

26 Sep 2011

Listeria contamination in cantaloupes shipped to 10 states

Listeria-contaminated cantaloupes were shipped to five more states than was previously known, bringing to 22 the total number of states affected by an outbreak that killed eight people, the FDA announced last week.

26 Sep 2011

EMA CHMP adopts positive opinion for Optimer's DIFICLIR to treat C. difficile infection

Optimer Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has adopted a positive opinion for DIFICLIR (fidaxomicin) tablets for the treatment of adults suffering with a Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), also known as C. difficile-associated diarrhea.

26 Sep 2011

CytoDyn files provisional patent application for humanized version of Cytolin to treat HIV

CytoDyn Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the development of new therapies for combating infection with immune deficiency viruses, HIV/AIDS, announced today that it has filed a provisional patent application in the United States for its humanized version of its lead product Cytolin, a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of HIV infection.

26 Sep 2011

Vaccination must be part of response to cholera outbreak in Haiti

Though "[c]holera vaccines are not a magic bullet and are not available in adequate numbers" to vaccinate everyone in Haiti, where at least 10 people die each day in an outbreak that began in October 2010, "there are compelling reasons to add vaccinations to the arsenal of public health weapons that has been deployed against cholera in Haiti," a Washington Post editorial states.

23 Sep 2011

Viewpoints: Concerns that AIDS fight is losing steam; Pharmacy choice bill is praised; Texas sex-ed policies questioned

The considerable progress in recent years-;including the 22-fold increase in the number of people receiving anti-retroviral drugs between 2001-2010-;has been due to scientific breakthroughs and to civil society's efforts to keep AIDS on the political agenda. This is now changing.

23 Sep 2011

More funding for leishmaniasis treatment could save more lives in East African outbreak

"East Africa's worst outbreak in a decade of visceral leishmaniasis, the deadliest parasitic disease after malaria, could ease if donors paid more attention to the illness," which infects approximately 500,000 people and kills up to 60,000 annually in 70 countries, the non-profit group "Leishmaniasis East Africa Platform, or LEAP, said in a statement from Nairobi" on Friday, Bloomberg reports.

23 Sep 2011

Urgency of antimalarial drug resistance must be recognized

Arjen Dondorp, deputy director of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Research Unit at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, and colleagues discuss the need to combat antimalarial drug resistance in this New England Journal of Medicine opinion piece, writing, "Researchers, funders, and policy leaders must recognize the urgency of the problem, take action to address simultaneously several important knowledge gaps, and focus immediately on eliminating the threat of artemisinin resistance."

23 Sep 2011

Fight against HIV losing momentum; Robust analysis needed to develop long-term strategy

"After a decade of unprecedented increases in donor funding and a corresponding 17 percent decline worldwide in the number of new infections, the fight against HIV is losing momentum," Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School, and Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and former executive director of UNAIDS, write in this Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

23 Sep 2011

Examining alternatives to assessing Global Fund effectiveness

In this post in the Center for Global Development's "Global Health Policy" blog, William Savedoff, a senior fellow at the center, responds to a high level panel's assessment (.pdf) of fiduciary controls at the Global Fund to Fight, AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, examining "what this report might mean for an organization that was expressly created to blaze an innovative approach to international aid and is being counseled to back away from that vision."

23 Sep 2011

African Leaders Malaria Alliance launches malaria scorecard

"The African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) has launched a scorecard to improve the fight against malaria on the African continent," IRIN reports. "Updated quarterly, it provides information from each country on policies formulated, preventative measures initiated, money spent, lives saved and lost," and "also tracks tracer indicators for maternal, newborn and child health," the news service writes.

23 Sep 2011

New treatment concept for complex malaria

Team from the Medical University of Vienna, led by Harald Noedl from the Institute of Specific Prophylaxis and Tropical Medicine, is developing a new treatment concept for complex malaria in Bangladesh. This treatment is intended to significantly cut the mortality rate and could save the lives of tens of thousands of children.

23 Sep 2011

Gilead announces EMA CHMP positive opinion for HIV-1 drug, Eviplera

Gilead Sciences, Inc. today announced that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), the scientific committee of the European Medicines Agency, has adopted a positive opinion on the company's Marketing Authorisation Application for the once-daily single-tablet regimen, Eviplera.

23 Sep 2011

Synthetic lectins inhibit HIV from entering cells

University of Utah researchers have discovered a new class of compounds that stick to the sugary coating of the AIDS virus and inhibit it from infecting cells - an early step toward a new treatment to prevent sexual transmission of the virus.

23 Sep 2011

FDA denies FOIA regarding Gilead Sciences' Truvada correspondence, AHF sues

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) today filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over its denial of AHF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding correspondence between the FDA and Gilead Sciences regarding its potential application to the FDA to expand the use of its AIDS drug, Truvada, for use as an HIV prevention pill for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in uninfected individuals.

23 Sep 2011

EMA CHMP adopts positive opinion for DIFICLIR to treat C. difficile infection

Astellas Pharma Europe Ltd. (APEL) and Optimer Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has adopted a positive opinion for DIFICLIR (fidaxomicin) tablets for the treatment of adults suffering with a Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), also known as C. difficile-associated diarrhoea (CDAD).

23 Sep 2011