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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

Study identifies genetic mutations that affect immune response to measles vaccination

Researchers at Mayo Clinic are hacking the genetic code that controls the human response to disease vaccination, and they are using this new cipher to answer many of the deep-seated questions that plague vaccinology, including why patients respond so differently to identical vaccines and how to minimize the side effects to vaccination.

23 Sep 2011

National HIV/AIDS Strategy meeting to be held at UAB

The White House Office of National AIDS Policy is holding a series of National HIV/AIDS Strategy Implementation Dialogues across the country to examine critical issues and encourage action and collaboration at the state and local levels. The first meeting, focusing on incorporating prevention and care research into HIV programs, is being held at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011.

23 Sep 2011

Two TGen students receive SRP grants for antibiotic resistance and Alzheimer's research

Two Arizona university graduate students working at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) have each received $50,000 grants from the Salt River Project.

23 Sep 2011

Researchers to expand malaria vaccine study after initial trial yields encouraging results

Encouraged by early results of a study of an experimental malaria vaccine involving 45 children in Burkina Faso, researchers led by Pierre Druilhe at the Pasteur Institute in Paris are set to expand the clinical trial, resulting in a larger study involving 800 children in Mali, BBC News reports.

23 Sep 2011

Researchers compare safety and effectiveness of cryotherapy, salicylic acid for verrucae

Research has shown no evidence of a difference in clearance rates between patient self-treatment and treatment given by healthcare professional for verrucae.

23 Sep 2011

IU professor to study factors influencing young women's adoption of HPV vaccine

Dena S. Cox, a professor of marketing and faculty fellow at the Kelley School of Business Indianapolis, has received a $99,600, two-year research grant from Merck to study factors influencing young women's adoption of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

23 Sep 2011

New microbicide may block AIDS virus from infecting cells

23 Sep 2011

Twenty aid agencies issue open letter urging international community to change approach in Somalia

Twenty aid agencies on Wednesday issued an open letter "urging the international community to change its approach to Somalia 'and enhance diplomatic engagement with the parties to the conflict, to ensure the unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid,'" particularly before the rainy season brings the threat of disease, IRIN reports.

23 Sep 2011

Disease/Infection News

Vaccination must be part of response to cholera outbreak in Haiti

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

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

Urgency of antimalarial drug resistance must be recognized

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

Examining alternatives to assessing Global Fund effectiveness

African Leaders Malaria Alliance launches malaria scorecard

New treatment concept for complex malaria

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

Synthetic lectins inhibit HIV from entering cells

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

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

Study identifies genetic mutations that affect immune response to measles vaccination

National HIV/AIDS Strategy meeting to be held at UAB

Two TGen students receive SRP grants for antibiotic resistance and Alzheimer's research

Researchers to expand malaria vaccine study after initial trial yields encouraging results

Researchers compare safety and effectiveness of cryotherapy, salicylic acid for verrucae

IU professor to study factors influencing young women's adoption of HPV vaccine

New microbicide may block AIDS virus from infecting cells

Twenty aid agencies issue open letter urging international community to change approach in Somalia

Real-time Raman monitoring for pharmaceutical hot melt extrusion

Synthetic Psychedelics: A Growing Public Health Concern

How the Vutara VXL simplifies single-molecule imaging

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