Virus News and Research

Latest Virus News and Research

Study sheds light on how Zika virus causes microcephaly in newborns

A new study led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine revealed how in utero Zika virus infection can lead to microcephaly in newborns. The team discovered that the Zika virus protein NS4A disrupts brain growth by hijacking a pathway that regulates the generation of new neurons.

14 Nov 2019

Study sheds light on how HIV infection may increase risk for sudden cardiac death

The success of antiretroviral therapies has extended the lives of people living with HIV, long enough for other chronic health conditions to emerge, including a recently documented uptick in sudden death.

14 Nov 2019

Limiting the spread of vaccine-related misinformation in social media

In a year that has seen the largest measles outbreak in the US in more than two decades, the role of social media in giving a platform to unscientific anti-vaccine messages and organizations has become a flashpoint.

14 Nov 2019

First Ebola vaccine prequalified by WHO for use in high-risk countries

The world's first Ebola vaccine has been prequalified by the World Health Organization (WHO).

14 Nov 2019

Uncovering the secret weapon of rabies viruses

In a new study published in the journal Cell Reports, scientists have discovered the exact site at which the immune system is disabled by the rabies virus, opening the way for a new and highly effective means of rabies prevention. This is a long-awaited discovery and could transform the field of rabies immunization.

13 Nov 2019

Opioid overdose treatment: intranasal vs intramuscular naloxone

Opioid addiction and dependency have become a common plague in many countries of the world. Accompanying these conditions, opioid overdose is being increasingly encountered in many emergency settings. The standard and highly effective antidote for this is naloxone hydrochloride, an opioid antagonist which has been in use for over 4 decades.

13 Nov 2019

Tulane virus needs intracellular calcium to replicate

Some gastrointestinal viruses need calcium. They need calcium ions to carry out several essential aspects of viral life, such as entry into host cells, genome replication and building new viruses to invade other cells. The cells invaded by viruses also use calcium. They use it as signals to regulate many of the cells' own processes, but viruses can takeover cellular calcium signaling to satisfy their own needs.

13 Nov 2019

Researchers take major step towards developing a viable vaccine for malaria

Researchers have narrowed down the malaria proteins and disease-fighting antibodies that could be used to develop a vaccine against the most severe forms of malaria.

13 Nov 2019

Scientists move closer towards developing an effective malaria vaccine

Scientists have taken another big step forward towards developing a vaccine that’s effective against the most severe forms of malaria.

13 Nov 2019

Russian scientists explain how an additional component can triple vaccine efficiency

A team of Russian scientists carried out a study on the cell immunity level and found out how an adjuvant called azoximer bromide increases the immunogenicity of the anti-flu vaccine.

12 Nov 2019

New approach may help kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Current treatment regimens for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of tuberculosis, are long, complex, and hard for people to sustain. Moreover, the bacteria often develop drug resistance, and many people harbor multi-drug-resistant strains. In 2018 alone, nearly 1.5 million people died from tuberculosis worldwide.

12 Nov 2019

New textbook on mysterious and deadly cytokine storm syndrome

There's no telling where the call will come from, or when. But Randy Cron, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pediatrics and medicine at UAB, knows to expect them.

11 Nov 2019

Researchers generate reliable maps for transmission risk of Zika virus

The spread of infectious diseases such as Zika depends on many different factors. Environmental factors play a role, as do socioeconomic factors. Recently, several attempts have be made to predict the transmission risk of the Zika virus at a global and local level, but the spatial and temporal patterns of transmission are still not well understood.

11 Nov 2019

New blood filtering system could draw disease from the body using magnets

An engineer has developed a new technology that could draw deadly infections such as malaria from the body using magnets.

11 Nov 2019

CRIPSR could be used to detect disease

CRISPR could be used to establish new diagnostic blood tests by identifying viral nucleic acids, such as Parvo or HPV.

11 Nov 2019

New point-of-care medical device rapidly and accurately detects viruses

The gene-editing tool CRISPR has been heralded as a scientific miracle destined to eradicate diseases from sickle-cell anemia to cancer, or decried as "the genetic scissors that tailor the human gene pool," an ethically risky technology driving us toward a designer babies.

11 Nov 2019

Clinical benefit of anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation decreases with age, shows study

The net clinical benefit of anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation (AF) -- one of the most important causes of irregular heartbeats and a leading cause of stroke -- decreases with age, as the risk of death from other factors diminishes their benefit in older patients, according to a study led by researchers at UC San Francisco.

11 Nov 2019

Zika virus causes altered immune responses and brain abnormalities in healthy pig offspring

Zika virus infection in the womb produces altered immune responses and sex-specific brain abnormalities in apparently healthy pig offspring, according to a study published November 14 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Uladzimir Karniychuk of the University of Saskatchewan, and colleagues.

From PLOS ONE 11 Nov 2019

Adding a specific immune molecule can boost efficacy of rabies vaccine

Every year, more than 59,000 people around the world die of rabies and there remains no cheap and easy vaccine regimen to prevent the disease in humans. Now, researchers report in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases that adding a specific immune molecule to a rabies vaccine can boost its efficacy.

From PLOS ONE 11 Nov 2019

Climate change spreading deadly virus in marine mammals

A deadly virus that kills thousands of European harbour seals in the northern Atlantic Ocean has now begun affecting seals, otters and sea lions in the northern Pacific Ocean. This virus is called the phocine distemper virus (PDV) that affects animals alone and does not affect humans.

10 Nov 2019