Feature Channels: Public Health

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Scientists and physicians at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, working with colleagues at the U.S. Navy Medical Research Center – Biological Defense Research Directorate (NMRC-BDRD), Texas A&M University, a San Diego-based biotech and elsewhere, have successfully used an experimental therapy involving bacteriophages — viruses that target and consume specific strains of bacteria — to treat a patient near death from a multidrug-resistant bacterium.

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UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers collaborated with an international team of scientists to achieve a significant milestone in the effort to understand pathogens responsible for some of the world’s most deadly infectious diseases.

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A national survey from Columbia University School of Nursing finds that almost 40 percent of nursing students say they feel they need more instruction on preventing and controlling infection, especially in busy healthcare environments, despite believing that their nursing program emphasizes the importance of infection prevention. More than half of respondents also report observing breaches in prevention practices during clinical placements, yet have trouble addressing them because they feel unqualified or fear retaliation from others.

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A new study led by Massachusetts Eye and Ear researchers found that oral promethazine, a drug commonly taken to alleviate motion sickness, temporarily worsened vestibular perception thresholds by 31 percent, lowering one’s ability to perceive sensory information about motion, balance and spatial orientation.

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UAB researchers develop a conceptual framework to help progress the care of people living with HIV by looking at ways to pursue better engagement in care.

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A financially strapped pregnant woman’s worries about the arrival and care of her little one could contribute to birth of a smaller, medically vulnerable infant, a new study suggests.

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Improved human health is not a benefit of conservation ― at least when health is measured through the lens of infectious disease. That's the main finding of a paper published April 24 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, which analyzed the relationship between infectious diseases and their environmental, demographic and economic drivers in dozens of countries over 20 years

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To help train youth to become educators and advocates for tobacco policy change, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health in El Paso is partnering with El Paso Independent School District high schools to create an innovative new program.

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The University of Maryland School of Medicine has been awarded a $9 million seven-year grant to develop new tools against drug-resistant malaria in Southeast Asia and other regions where the disease is common.

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Glaucoma in developing countries represents a significant health crisis. The great majority of people in developing countries aren’t ever tested for glaucoma, so diagnosis and treatment are rare. And if they are diagnosed, they often can’t pay for medication, assuming medications are available.

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The Amazonian Center of Excellence for Malaria Research, headed by Joseph Vinetz, MD, professor of medicine and tropical disease specialist at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, will receive up to approximately $8.3 million over seven years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

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The Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute (JHMRI) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has been awarded a seven-year grant worth up to $10 million over seven years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to accelerate the control and elimination of malaria.

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Widely considered one of the greatest medical achievements of modern civilization, vaccines have prevented countless cases of disease and saved millions of lives.

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Men who have sex with men (MSM) accounted for two thirds of all new HIV infections in the United States, with 26 percent occurring in Latinos, according to 2014 data. If those rates continue, it is estimated that one in four Latino MSM may be diagnosed with HIV during his lifetime.

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Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine are working to develop a test for the Zika virus that they hope will provide accurate results for a wide range of time between when an individual is potentially exposed to when he or she is tested for the virus.

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Doctors and researchers in Southampton have developed a novel way of using a swab test which can rapidly diagnose flu and other viral infections in patients with severe respiratory conditions – resulting in shorter courses of antibiotics and less time in hospital.

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Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories just received recognition from the Secretary of Energy for their work to mitigate the effects of the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Reducing the amount of time Liberians who suspected they had Ebola spent waiting in large, open waiting rooms called Ebola treatment units was critical to controlling the outbreak. Sandia modeled and analyzed the West Africa nation’s blood sample transport system from the treatment units to diagnostic labs and made recommendations to improve turnaround time.

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The Johns Hopkins Center for Inherited Disease Research (CIDR) marked its 20-year history supporting large-scale scientific collaboration by securing funding to the center through 2023. CIDR successfully competed for a seven-year contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) providing up to $213 million in research funding. The renewal contract enables NIH-funded researchers to use CIDR’s sequencing, high-throughput genotyping, analysis and informatics services for a wide array of studies exploring genetic contributions to human health and disease.

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A new study finds defective HIV proviruses, long thought to be harmless, produce viral proteins and distract the immune system from killing intact proviruses needed to reduce the HIV reservoir and cure HIV. The study was published by researchers at the George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University in Cell Host & Microbe.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins and George Washington universities report new evidence that proteins created by defective forms of HIV long previously believed to be harmless actually interact with our immune systems and are actively monitored by a specific type of immune cell, called cytotoxic T cells.

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Researchers at the University of Maryland have identified how the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa uses tension-activated membrane channels to stop itself from swelling up and bursting when it is suddenly exposed to water. The study, which will be published April 19 in The Journal of General Physiology, helps explain how this bacterium—a major cause of hospital-acquired infections—persists in a variety of different environments.

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Mount Sinai researchers describe novel mechanism cells use to recognize earliest stages of infection and how virus evades triggering an immune response

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Researchers have developed a capsule that, when dissolved in the stomach, releases a star-shaped material containing drugs that help to prevent malaria infections and lasts for up to two weeks.

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Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have found that an area of the brain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, may have to work harder to modify negative emotional responses in people with poor sleep who have depression or anxiety.

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The University of Virginia Health System is conducting a research study to determine if exercise and reduced-nicotine cigarettes can ease the withdrawal symptoms associated with reducing nicotine dependence.

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The 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic affected several countries in West Africa, leading to the death of more than 11'000 people. Although this epidemic of Ebolavirus disease is over, there is no knowing if, when or where another may strike. It is therefore more important than ever to find a reliable vaccine against this deadly disease. Research on vaccines, which was ongoing during the epidemic in West Africa, is now yielding promising results.

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Although human population studies have linked air pollution to chronic inflammation of nasal and sinus tissues, direct biological and molecular evidence for cause and effect has been scant. Now, Johns Hopkins researchers report that experiments in mice continually exposed to dirty air have revealed that direct biological effect.

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A UNC research team has identified a new cell in the body where HIV persists despite treatment. This discovery has major implications for cure research.

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Many people might not have heard of the Aedes aegypti mosquito until this past year, when the mosquito, and the disease it can carry – Zika – began to make headlines. But more than 220 years ago, this same breed of mosquito was spreading a different and deadly epidemic right here in Philadelphia and just like Zika, this epidemic is seeing a modern resurgence, with Brazil at its epicenter.

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UF/IFAS entomology associate professor Chelsea Smartt led a research team that found Zika RNA in Aedes albopictus. That’s not the species -- known as Aedes aegypti -- most often associated with Zika. But scientists have never discounted Aedes albopictus as another possible carrier of the potentially deadly virus.

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Understanding whether children who live closer to coal ash storage sites and power plants have greater neurobehavioral disorders than children who live further away is the focus of a University of Louisville study funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

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What are the critical challenges in emergency legal preparedness and policy? Public health preparedness leaders, officials and experts will examine the question during the “Emergency Legal Preparedness Summit” on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Georgetown University Law Center.

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All-terrain vehicle-related injuries remain a large public health problem in this country, with children more adversely affected than adults. According to researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, the major risk factors for young riders also are entirely preventable.

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Investigators examined the relationship between injection drug use and immune activation in a sample of HIV infected and uninfected PWID. Findings suggest that efforts to encourage injection cessation or reduction in frequency can have positive health benefits through reducing immune activation.

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patchwork of state laws creates a labyrinth that can make it confusing to navigate incapacitated patients’ medical wishes. Without clear national standards, the problem may worsen as the nation’s 75 million baby boomers continue to age, according to medical ethics research published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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An international effort to analyze the entire database of Ebola virus genomes from the 2013-2016 West African epidemic reveals insights into factors that sped or slowed the rampage and calls for using real-time sequencing and data-sharing to contain future viral disease outbreaks.

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As the World Health Organization steps up its efforts to eradicate a once-rampant tropical disease, a University of Washington study suggests that monitoring, and potentially treating, the monkeys that co-exist with humans in affected parts of the world may be part of the global strategy.

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Bacteria are everywhere. And despite widespread belief, not all bacteria are “bad.” However, to combat those that can cause health issues for humans, there has been an over-reliance on the use of antibiotics – so much so, that many of them are now proving ineffective due to bacteria developing increased resistance to them. This paradigm led researchers at NSU to take another look at how bacteria do what they do to see if there was another way to approach this issue.

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A research breakthrough allowing the first direct, empirical, blood-based, cow-side test for diagnosing bovine tuberculosis (TB) could spare ranchers and the agriculture industry from costly quarantines and the mass slaughter of animals infected with this easily spread disease.

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Although warm, spring weather means more time outdoors, it also means more bugs – like bees, ticks and mosquitoes. The best way to deal with pesky bites and stings, say dermatologists from the American Academy of Dermatology, is to prevent them in the first place. This can also help you avoid an insect-related disease, which can put a damper on anyone’s spring.

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The National Candle Association is calling upon the leadership of South Carolina State University to put a stop to the university's promotion of unsupported research and scientifically inaccurate claims.

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Berkeley Lab researchers collaborated with colleagues from the University of Indiana and Texas A&M University to solve the atomic structure of a Zika virus protein that is key to viral reproduction. The X-ray studies were conducted at the Advanced Light Source in the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology.

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The study, ”The Committed Inmate Relationships During Incarceration and STI/HIV Prevention,” aimed to characterize the relationships of incarcerated African-Americans and the influence of those characteristics in protection against STI/HIV risk when in the community, when STI/HIV transmission risk is greatest.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a way to tether HIV-fighting antibodies to immune cells, creating a cell population resistant to the virus.

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Cholera cases in East Africa increase by roughly 50,000 during El Niño, the cyclical weather occurrence that profoundly changes global weather patterns, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.

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Ecologists at the University of Georgia have developed a model that maps the likelihood of Ebola virus “spillovers”—when the virus jumps from its long-term host to humans or animals such as great apes—across Africa on a month-by-month basis.

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Recent studies have implicated air pollution from vehicles as playing a role in whether exposed infants develop autism. Now a UWM scientist will try to uncover how the developing brain is affected by these chemicals and whether they also lead to childhood ADHD.

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Researchers in Germany have developed a transgenic mouse that could help scientists identify new influenza virus strains with the potential to cause a global pandemic. The mouse is described in a study, “In vivo evasion of MxA by avian influenza viruses requires human signature in the viral nucleoprotein,” that will be published April 10 in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

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The University of Chicago Medicine's Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation (Ci3) in Sexual and Reproductive Health has launched a research initiative aimed at reducing HIV infection and transmission among vulnerable youth of color, including young men who have sex with men (YMSM) and young transgender women.