Disease/Infection News

RSS

'Urgent action' needed to prevent resistance to antiretroviral therapy

"The clear pattern of increasing antiretroviral resistance in lower-income settings must be considered in the context of the worldwide HIV-control agenda," especially because "the increasing rates of antiretroviral resistance in low-income settings represent a potential threat to the emerging treatment-as-prevention strategy," Evan Wood and Julio Montaner of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS write in a Lancet Infectious Diseases opinion piece.

28 Sep 2011

Scientists warn about climate-induced increase in death rates over the next 60 years

Scientists are warning that death rates linked to climate change will increase in several European countries over the next 60 yrs.

28 Sep 2011

Contaminated Cantaloupes carrying listeria leads to one of the worst outbreaks

According to federal health officials Tuesday, at least 13 people are dead amid 72 sickened in 18 states in an outbreak of listeria food poisoning tied to contaminated cantaloupes.

28 Sep 2011

Vietnam closes kindergartens to control outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease

"More than a dozen kindergartens in Vietnam have closed to deal with an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease that has killed 111 children and sickened more than 57,000 this year, an official and the government said," according to the Associated Press/Washington Post.

28 Sep 2011

GAVI to purchase $1 billion in childhood vaccines for distribution in 37 of the poorest nations

The Geneva-based GAVI Alliance, a fund backed by governments, the World Bank, the WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday that it will purchase more than $1 billion in vaccines against rotavirus, pneumococcal and other diseases through deals made with GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co. to immunize children in 37 of the poorest nations, Bloomberg reports.

28 Sep 2011

Treatment of CMV infection can inhibit medullablastomas development

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to inhibit the growth of brain tumours by treating the common Cytomegalovirus (CMV). The virus, which is found in a wide range of tumour types, offers a possible route towards controlling tumour growth and reducing the size of the tumour as a complement to conventional cytotoxin-based therapies.

28 Sep 2011

High prevalence of NTDs in Central Asia after 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union

The open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases will publish an article emphasizing the rising burden of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in Central Asia on Tuesday, Sept. 27th.

28 Sep 2011

Burundi makes significant progress against NTDs

In this "End the Neglect" blog post, Alan Fenwick, director of the Schistosomaisis Control Initiative and professor of Tropical Parasitology at Imperial College in London, examines Burundi's progress in combating neglected tropical diseases.

28 Sep 2011

Researchers validate two parasite enzymes as potential anti-malarial drug targets

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Monash University, and Virginia Tech have used a set of novel inhibitors to analyze how the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, uses enzymes to chew up human hemoglobin from host red blood cells as a food source.

28 Sep 2011

Global health blunders can lend useful lessons

New York Times reporter Lawrence Altman recounts his experience in the mid-1960s with a measles immunization campaign in Upper Volta during his time with the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the CDC in a "Doctor's World" perspective piece in the newspaper. Altman says that although the effort to expand the immunization campaign from a small field trial to a regional program "failed miserably," the "lessons learned from these blunders led to a new program that wiped out smallpox, still the only human disease to have been eradicated from the planet."

28 Sep 2011

Emissions from livestock farms cause lung patients living nearby to experience more exacerbations

Emissions from livestock farms cause asthma and COPD patients living nearby to experience more exacerbations, according to research presented today at the European Respiratory Society's Annual Congress in Amsterdam.

28 Sep 2011

New method for quickly identifying individual viruses

A new method for quickly identifying individual viruses and recognising how they bind to host cells may become a vital tool in the early control of winter vomiting disease and other virus-based diseases. In the west, this means saving money and reducing stress on health-care systems. In developing countries, this means saving lives.

28 Sep 2011

UCI professor wins Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists & Engineers

Rommie Amaro, UC Irvine assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences and computer science, has been selected by President Obama for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists & Engineers.

28 Sep 2011

More predictability in the chaos of infectious Chagas disease transmission

Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, not all epidemics involve people suffering from zombie-like symptoms--some can only be uncovered through door-to-door epidemiology and advanced mathematics.

28 Sep 2011

Columbia University receives CFI grant to investigate causes of chronic fatigue syndrome

The Chronic Fatigue Initiative (CFI) - a new privately funded research directive focused on chronic fatigue syndrome - announced a substantial grant to a Columbia University research team to investigate the role of pathogens in causing chronic fatigue syndrome. The pathogen discovery and pathogenesis program will be led by Drs. Ian Lipkin and Mady Hornig of the Center for Infection and Immunity.

28 Sep 2011

Microbiologist offers advice to guard against coming down with the flu

October marks the beginning of flu season, and once again, health care professionals are exhorting people to get a flu shot. Microbiologist John Tudor, Ph.D., professor of biology at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, agrees that it's time to roll up our sleeves and offer up our arms for the vaccination.

28 Sep 2011

Study sheds light on when to start antiretroviral therapy

Findings from a study published in the current issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, when "taken together with other studies published over the last few years," show that beginning people living with HIV on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) when their CD4 cell count is between 350 and 500 "appears to be beneficial over the long term.

28 Sep 2011

MicroDose initiates MDT-637 Phase 1 trial in respiratory syncytial virus

MicroDose Therapeutx, Inc. today announced that the first human subject has been dosed in a Phase 1 clinical trial of MDT-637, MicroDose's inhalable small molecule antiviral fusion inhibitor for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus.

28 Sep 2011

Methodist Hospital internist offers few simple suggestions to prevent cold and flu

The first few breezes of fall bring with them not only the promise of a welcome change in season, but also the threat of colds and flu. Dr. Joshua Septimus, an internist at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, offers a few simple suggestions to protect you and your family this cold and flu season. "The most useful tip I can pass along is to wash your hands," says Septimus. "It sounds so simple, but it is truly the most important thing you can do to protect yourself."

27 Sep 2011

Lead compound activates infection-fighting REDD1 protein and kills flu strain

A compound tested by UT Southwestern Medical Center investigators destroys several viruses, including the deadly Spanish flu that killed an estimated 30 million people in the worldwide pandemic of 1918.

27 Sep 2011