Feature Channels: Infectious Diseases

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The new vaccine was developed to act as a booster to Bacille Calmette Guerin (BCG), currently the only TB vaccine available. BCG was developed in the 1920s and has been used worldwide. The new “booster” would reactivate immune elements that over time diminish following BCG vaccination.

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Cocaine makes otherwise resistant immune cells susceptible to infection with HIV, causing both significant infection and new production of the virus.

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In June 2012, Tony Goldberg returned from one of his frequent trips to Kibale National Park, an almost 500-square-mile forest in western Uganda where he studies how infectious diseases spread and evolve in the wild. But he didn’t return alone.

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Canada should begin screening ‘Baby Boomers’ for the hepatitis C virus infection, since this age group is likely the largest group to have the illness, and most don’t know they have it, say a group of liver specialists in the Toronto Western Hospital Francis Family Liver Clinic. Unlike many other chronic viral infections, early treatment makes hepatitis C curable.

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The report by scientists of a new hepatitis virus earlier this year was a false alarm, according to UC San Francisco researchers who correctly identified the virus as a contaminant present in a type of glassware used in many research labs.

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Researchers have developed a model that helps scientists and clinicians understand that complex interactions of a type of bacteria that is the leading cause of peptic ulcers. The discovery may inform changes in the ways doctors treat patients.

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Candida albicans is a double agent: In most of us, it lives peacefully, but for people whose immune systems are compromised by HIV or other severe illnesses, it is frequently deadly. Now a new study from Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical School shows how targeting a specific fungal component might turn the fungus from a lion back into a kitten.

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Scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have uncovered a new mechanism by which influenza can infect cells – a finding that ultimately may have implications for immunity against the flu.

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Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) discovered that an antibody that binds and neutralizes HIV likely also targets the body’s own “self” proteins. This finding could complicate the development of HIV vaccines designed to elicit this protective antibody, called 4E10, and others like it, as doing so might be dangerous or inefficient.

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Pinning down an effective way to combat the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, the viral precursor to AIDS, has long been challenge task for scientists and physicians, because the virus is an elusive one that mutates frequently and, as a result, quickly becomes immune to medication. A team of Drexel University researchers is trying to get one step ahead of the virus with a microbicide they’ve created that can trick HIV into “popping” itself into oblivion.

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A blood test developed by researchers at Duke Medicine showed more than 90-percent accuracy in distinguishing between viral and bacterial infections when tested in people with respiratory illnesses.

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Now, a team of researchers led by Dr. David N. Levy, Associate Professor of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology at the New York University College of Dentistry (NYUCD), have discovered a new way that HIV-1 reproduces itself which could advance the search for new ways to combat infection.

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They’re small, creepy and suck your blood. Every parent dreads it, but it’s inevitable—the “lice letter.” Though a lice infestation is about as common as a cold, trying to rid your life of them can be as much of a head-scratcher as those disgusting bugs themselves.

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For the first time researchers have found an association between living in proximity to high-density livestock production and community-acquired infections with MRSA. Their analysis concluded that approximately 11% of community-acquired MRSA and soft tissue infections in the study population could be attributed to crop fields fertilized with swine manure. The study is the first to examine the association between high-density livestock operations and manure-applied crop fields and MRSA infections in the community.

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Researchers at Tufts have identified how one type of bacteria, Yersinia, immobilizes the immune system in order to grow in the organ tissues of mice. To do so, the researchers extended the use of a technique and suggest that it could be used to study other bacteria that use the same or similar means of infection.

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Researchers from Geisinger’s Henry Hood Center for Health Research and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have for the first time found an association between living in proximity to high-density livestock production and community-acquired infections with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as MRSA.

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Believed to be eradicated from the United States in 2000, measles are brought into the country and can infect those who are not vaccinated.

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A team of Chinese and US scientists has determined the high-resolution atomic structure of a cell-surface receptor that most strains of HIV use to get into human immune cells. The researchers also showed where maraviroc, an HIV drug, attaches to cells and blocks HIV’s entry.

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A major new finding that will significantly advance efforts to create the world’s first antibody-based AIDS vaccine was published today by researchers from the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology.

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Johns Hopkins scientists have found that levels of certain fats found in cerebral spinal fluid can predict which patients with HIV are more likely to become intellectually impaired.

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A drug approved just two years ago for treating bacterial infections may hold promise for treating the potentially fatal MRSA pneumonia, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study. Researchers found that patients treated with the antibiotic ceftaroline fosamil, or CPT-F, had a lower mortality rate after 28 days than the mortality rate seen in patients treated with vancomycin, the most common drug therapy for MRSA pneumonia.

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Researchers at The Mount Sinai Medical Center have developed an innovative system to test how a virus interacts with cells in the body — to see, for example, what happens in lung cells when a deadly respiratory virus attacks them.

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Vaccines on the Go: What You Should Know is a unique mobile app that allows busy parents to access up-to-date, reliable information about the science and safety of vaccines -- wherever and whenever they need it. The Vaccine Education Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (VEC) now offers the App for both iPhone and Android.

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Simply replacing the connector in the IV system in patients with central lines could help reduce deadly bloodstream infections, researchers at Georgia Regents University have found.

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Researchers at Seattle BioMed are using systems biology to discover how liver cells infected with malaria parasites are more vulnerable than previously thought, and that existing drugs can be leveraged to force those infected cells to self destruct while leaving the healthy cells intact.

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A new study demonstrates that an approach that combines behavioral science with social media and online communities can lead to increased AIDS testing and improved health behaviors among men at risk of HIV infection. The approach is also applicable across a variety of diseases.

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SILVER SPRING, MD, Sept. 5, 2013 – HIV seroprevalence among civilian applications continues to decline with rates in 2012 at their lowest level since the U.S. Armed Forces began testing civilian recruits for the disease, according to a new study.

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The annual incidence rates of primary diagnosed septicemia among active component service members increased nearly 580 percent from 2004 to 2012, according to a new study. During the 13-year surveillance period 3,360 hospitalized active component service members were identified as incident cases of septicemia based on diagnoses recorded in any diagnostic position (Table 2,Figure 1), according to the study published in the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report, a peer-reviewed journal on illnesses and diseases affecting service members from the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center.

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A protein at the center of Parkinson’s disease research now also has been found to play a key role in causing the destruction of bacteria that cause tuberculosis, according to scientists led by UC San Francisco microbiologist and tuberculosis expert Jeffery Cox, PhD.

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Children in a malaria-endemic community in Ghana who received a micronutrient powder with iron did not have an increased incidence of malaria, according to a study in the September 4 issue of JAMA. Previous research has suggested that iron supplementation for children with iron deficiency in malaria-endemic areas may increase the risk of malaria.

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The use of 4 different 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine immunization schedules in healthy term infants resulted in no statistically significant differences in antibody levels between the infants after the booster dose at 12 months of age for almost all serotypes, according to a study in the September 4 issue of JAMA.

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The hepatitis C virus hijacks the body’s immune system, leaving T cells unable to function. A new study in animal models suggests that blocking a protein that helps the virus thrive could restore immune function, allowing the body to fight infection. The work, led by teams at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Emory University, was published online Aug. 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Some of this year's flu vaccine will protect against four strains of the virus. There will also be vaccines which protect against three strains of the virus as well. This is the first year the four strain flu vaccine is available.

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The gene mutation process that creates drug resistance in a tuberculosis-causing bacterium often requires more than one step. It is not just a single mutation, but a series, according to research led by Dr. David Alland of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

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Infectious disease experts at Johns Hopkins have found, in studies in mice, that a drug better known as a treatment for high blood pressure and headaches effectively speeds up treatment of TB when added to the standard, daily antibiotic regimen. Test animals were cured in four months instead of the usual six.

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New mothers and obese people, two groups not typically regarded as risk groups, were found to have a higher risk of death and other severe outcomes from influenza, according to the global study sponsored by the World Health Organization.

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A new technology is showing promise as the basis for a home test to diagnose influenza quickly, before the window for taking antiviral drugs slams shut and sick people spread the virus to others, scientists reported here today. In a presentation at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, they described how it also would determine the specific strain of flu virus, helping in selection of the most effective drug.

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Disease-causing bacteria stink — literally — and the odor released by some of the nastiest microbes has become the basis for a faster and simpler new way to diagnose serious blood infections and finger the specific microbe, scientists reported today at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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An ambitious partnership among more than 100 organizations and governments led by Procter & Gamble’s nonprofit program, Children’s Safe Drinking Water, has helped provide more than 6 billion quarts of clean drinking water to families in developing countries, saving an estimated 32,000 lives. The talk was given at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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In an advance toward providing mosquito-plagued people, pets and livestock with an invisibility cloak against these blood-sucking insects, scientists today described discovery of substances that block mosquitoes’ ability to smell and target their victims. The presentation was among almost 7,000 scheduled this week at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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A revolutionary new solar energy technology that turns water into steam without boiling the entire container of water has become the basis for new devices to sanitize medical and dental instruments and human waste in developing countries, scientists said here today. Prototypes of the devices, which need no electricity or fuel, were the topic of one of the keynote addresses at the opening of the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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An international team of scientists have demonstrated that a simple, low-cost intervention holds the potential to eradicate a debilitating tropical disease that threatens nearly 1.4 billion people in more than six dozen countries.

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By any measure, tuberculosis (TB) is a wildly successful pathogen. It infects as many as two billion people in every corner of the world, with a new infection of a human host estimated to occur every second.

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Poor oral health, including gum disease and dental problems, was found to be associated with oral human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, which causes about 40 percent to 80 percent of oropharyngeal cancers, according to a study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

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A culturally tailored HIV prevention program developed and tested by investigators at UCLA and the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science has been shown to significantly reduce unprotected sex among bisexual black men.

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As part of the largest international research effort ever made to combat tuberculosis, a team of Johns Hopkins and Brazilian experts has found that preventive antibiotic therapy for people with HIV lowers this group’s chances of developing TB or dying.

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University of Utah and George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center researchers have developed a mathematical model to help answer critical questions and guide the response to an anthrax exposure.

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A smoking-cessation intervention delivered through mobile phones to HIV/AIDS-positive smokers increased cessation rates compared to standard care, according to research published online in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

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New UAB faculty hopes to implement her successful Ohio HIV/AIDS research, education/prevention program in Birmingham’s African-American churches.