Feature Channels: Infectious Diseases

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A common transmissible strain of the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa has been identified among cystic fibrosis (CF) patients in Canada, suggesting that cross-infection has occurred widely between CF centers in the United Kingdom and Canada, according to a study in the November 17 issue of JAMA. Infection with this strain among Canadian CF patients has been associated with an increased risk of death or lung transplantation.

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A promising new approach to immunization might reduce costs and enable thousands more people around the world to be vaccinated. A team led by researchers at Tufts University developed a vaccine for rotavirus that can be administered through nasal drops. The study in mice, published in Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, induced a potent immune response and prevented infection.

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World AIDS Day is December 1, but healthcare professionals at Temple University work year-round to combat HIV by focusing on reducing the community viral load, or the severity of HIV in a particular group. This approach has become widespread in the past two years, and it is still evolving and undergoing evaluation.

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Scientists from the University of Michigan have moved one step closer to a vaccine that could prevent a majority of urinary tract infections, which are caused by E. coli bacteria. Using a genetic technique rarely used to look at infections in human hosts, the researchers studied how the E. coli bacteria operate and discovered key differences between how the bacteria's genes behave in women and how they behave in mice used in experiments.

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1) Only one-third of female teens complete the three-dose vaccine series; 2) Young women and black women are least likely to complete the series.

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Weill Cornell Medical College announced today that it was awarded two $100,000 grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of the next phase of Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to encourage bold and unconventional ideas for global health. The grants will provide continued support to promising and innovative global health research projects conducted by Dr. Carl Nathan, titled "Senescent and Rejuvenated Mtb Subsets on Exit From Latency," and Dr. Kyu Rhee, titled "Metabolosomes: The Organizing Principle of TB Latency."

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Controlling malaria in part of Africa may become easier thanks to an international partnership between U.S. researchers and colleagues in Ethiopia that uses new tools to monitor risk.

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A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examines the burden of HIV and sexually transmitted disease among male clients of the commercial sex industry in China’s Sichuan province. Since 2007, heterosexual transmission has replaced injecting drug use as the primary transmission mode of all HIV infections in China.

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Although now less frequent because of preventive antibiotics, meningitis caused by group B streptococcal (GBS) bacteria is still a serious illness causing a high rate of death and severe complications in infants, reports a study in the November issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

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A debilitating side effect of a colon cancer chemotherapy treatment could be eliminated if a new discovery bears fruit. The pre-clinical finding relates to the drug CPT-11, or Irinotecan, which can cause severe diarrhea. Researchers targeted and blocked an enzyme in bacteria in the digestive system believed to be responsible for the side effect.

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For patients with the most common form of hepatitis C being treated for the first time, the addition of an investigational hepatitis C–specific protease inhibitor called telaprevir to the current standard therapy markedly improved their sustained viral response (SVR or viral cure) rate.

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Results of a study conducted by researchers at Georgia Tech and the CDC suggest that strengthening routine influenza vaccination and health programs may help states improve their vaccination coverage against future pandemics or other health emergencies.

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Helicobacter pylori, a common stomach bacterium, reduced the severity of inflammation of the colon caused by Salmonella in mice, according to research from U-M Medical School scientists.

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An international team of scientists have traced the plague back to its roots in China and paved the way for future bacteria research.

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Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rank mortality related to chronic liver disease and cirrhosis as the 12th most common cause of death in adults in the U.S. Using a modified definition that includes diseases such as viral hepatitis, liver cancer and obesity-related fatty liver disease, Mayo Clinic-led researchers have found that liver-related mortality is as high as fourth for some age groups, and eighth overall.

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Scientists at Johns Hopkins have taken a less-is-more approach to designing effective drug treatments that are precisely tailored to disease-causing pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria, and cancer cells, any of which can trigger the body’s immune system defenses.

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International team of scientists have used DNA fingerprinting analyses to understand multiple global plague disease events.

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Scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College have identified a potential new treatment for the Nipah and Hendra viruses, two lethal and emerging viruses for which there is currently no treatment or vaccine available. The approach could also lead to new therapies for measles, mumps and the flu. The new research appears in today's edition of the prestigious journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Pathogens.

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The proportion of Americans age 65 and older who were vaccinated against pneumonia increased from 53 percent to 58 percent, but the rate falls short of the goal of 90 percent.

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Study findings might help better understand bronchitis, emphysema, other lung diseases.

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A study of nearly 1,200 older patients hospitalized for severe sepsis indicate that those who survive are at higher risk for long-term cognitive impairment and physical limitations than those hospitalized for other reasons.

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Research teams from two continents have come together to form the International malaria research consortium for the development of novel classes of antimalarials. This bold initiative will develop novel classes of drugs against malaria, a deadly disease in desperate need of new treatments.

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In the current issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, scientists at The Wistar Institute describe how viral microRNA – small segments of RNA that suppress the effects of gene activity – allows Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) to hide within cells and evade the immune system. The scientists believe their findings may one day enable physicians to flush EBV out of hiding, allowing a healthy immune system to rid the body of the virus.

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Knowledge gaps and fear — some of it unjustified — are common among the caregivers of children with a drug-resistant staph bacterium known as MRSA, according to the results of a small study from the Johns Hopkins Children Center. These caregivers thirst for timely, detailed and simple information, the researchers add.

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A research team led by Ken Krantz MD, PhD of NovaBay focused on impetigo, a highly contagious skin infection that affects mostly children and is caused by S. aureus, including the increasingly common antibiotic-resistant MRSA and S. pyogenes. It is currently treated with antibiotic ointments to which bacteria may develop resistance.

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The H1N1 influenza pandemic has led to a sharp increase in the number of children with a serious "secondary" bacterial infection called empyema in children, suggests a study in the October issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, and pharmacy.

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In a survey of Chicago-area healthcare facilities, researchers at Rush University Medical Center and the Cook County Department of Public Health have found that the incidence of KPC-producing bacteria is rising. These bugs cause infections with high mortality rates and are resistant to the most commonly used antibiotics.

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To help computational modelers who study the spread of infectious diseases, including flu, researchers at RTI International in North Carolina created a synthetic population mirroring U.S. demographics. Now they’ve added another layer of realism: where the virtual citizens live.

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Chemists led by Mei Hong of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory have discovered the shuttle mechanism that relays protons from a healthy cell into a flu virus. The proton movement is an important part of the flu virus life cycle.

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Beating the flu has always been tough, but it has gotten even more difficult in recent years. Two of the four antiviral drugs used to treat a nasty case of the influenza A virus no longer work.

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The University of Illinois at Chicago has received a $7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study effective ways to seek, test, and treat inmates with HIV.

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A recently formed Boston-based start up called HanGenix is the first company to be spun out of the new CIMIT Accelerator program. HanGenix is focused on reducing hospital acquired infections (HAI) by installing comprehensive hand hygiene solutions that remind clinicians to perform proper hand hygiene and document their compliance. The CIMIT Accelerator program facilitates technological innovations that can be handed off to industry within twelve to eighteen months.

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Interaction between 'kiss of death' marker and protein-chopping factory - new target for anti-TB drugs.

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You don’t have to take getting the flu lying down (unless absolutely necessary). That’s why LifeBridge Health has two of the most important ways to prevent someone in your family from catching it.

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Benjamin Luft, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Stony Brook University Medical Center, and a team of medical researchers have determined the genetic blueprint of 13 strains of the bacteria that cause Lyme disease.

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Health system plans to match last year’s effort when 99.3 percent of staff was vaccinated.

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A new University of Michigan study shows that institutions use different methods to measure blood stream infections. Bloodstream infections are the most common hospital-associated infections in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and a significant source of in-hospital deaths, increased length of stay and added medical costs. The study’s findings, published in the October issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, offer a compelling opportunity for hospitals to improve their CA-BSI surveillance as a means to promote valid comparisons among institutions. Current publicly reported data show that some hospitals report a four-fold difference in infection rates.

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Researchers have determined the genetic structures of 13 previously unmapped strains of the bacterium that causes Lyme Disease. These findings may accelerate progress toward vaccines and more effective treatments.

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A study by two Florida State University biochemists makes an important contribution to science’s understanding of a serious problem causing concern worldwide: the growing resistance of some harmful bacteria to the drugs that were intended to kill them.

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William R. Jacobs, Jr., Ph.D., professor of microbiology & immunology and of genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator, has been awarded a three-year, $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a novel genetic strategy for combating tuberculosis (TB). TB causes almost two million deaths each year, making it the world’s most deadly bacterial infection.

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For married couples in which one partner is HIV-positive and the other is HIV-negative, antiretroviral therapy (ART) does not reduce the risk of transmitting HIV to the uninfected partner, according to a study from China in the October issue of JAIDS: Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. JAIDS is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry.

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Loyola physician says this season will be different in several ways.

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Kathleen Alexander discovered that banded mongoose that were living closely with humans in northern Botswana are dying from a novel tuberculosis species.

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New research shows that an intravenous (IV) treatment may cut a person’s risk of dying from bacterial meningitis. The research is published in the September 29, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The treatment is called dexamethasone.

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In recent human trials for a promising new class of drug designed to target the hepatitis C virus (HCV) without shutting down the immune system, some of the HCV strains being treated exhibited signs of drug resistance.

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Johns Hopkins has a wide range of experts available for interviews and comments about seasonal flu, H1N1, emergency preparedness, infection control, flu transmission in children, vaccine safety, flu treatment, public health ethics, flu in cancer patients, and related public communications strategies. If you would like to interview a Johns Hopkins expert, call or e-mail the designated information officer in the list below.

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By using social networks such as Twitter, researchers can more quickly and inexpensively determine trends in spread of contagious diseases such as influenza.

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While the U.S. has made great progress in the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis, the nation has become more susceptible to potential epidemics of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), according a study led by Johns Hopkins researchers. Computer simulations show that as TB prevalence falls, the risk for more extensive MDR-TB increases. In addition, the simulation also showed that higher detection of TB cases without proper treatment of cases also increased risk.

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The first U.S. National AIDS Strategy "makes epidemiologic sense" and can meet its central goal of achieving a 25 percent reduction in the incidence of AIDS by 2015, according to an editorial in JAIDS: Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

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Researchers led by Iowa State's Edward Yu have discovered the crystal structures of pumps that allow bacteria to resist heavy metal toxins and antibiotics. Their discovery is reported in the Sept. 23 edition of the journal Nature.