Concerns about a Swine flu outbreak lowered retail stocks on Monday. According to food safety expert Nancy Childs, Ph.D., pandemic reactions create consumer distrust in the safety of the retail environment. "Any potential for further slowdown in global economic activity is a concern," she says.
Georgia Tech professors have developed models that show how a flu outbreak would spread in the state of Georgia and what the best intervention strategies are.
Jon Stone, safety and health specialist at Michigan Technological University and safety officer on the University's Incident Command Team, can talk knowledgably about handling a potential epidemic or pandemic on a university campus.
Richard P. Wenzel, M.D., internationally known expert on infectious disease, is available for comment on swine flu and can talk to the implications for the nation of a potential epidemic, a global pandemic and how epidemics have been handled historically.
Two infectious disease experts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "“ Dr. David Weber and Dr. Myron Cohen -- are available to discuss swine flu.
The University of Texas at San Antonio and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Collaborate with Merck & Co., Inc., to Develop a Vaccine for Chlamydia.
The current swine flu outbreak recalls the 1976 swine flu cluster in NJ that led to mass immunizations in America. An epidemiologist at UMDNJ says the current and past outbreaks point out what can go right - and wrong - in the face of a possible epidemic when potential life and death decisions must be made without the luxury of weeks or months to gather and analyze evidence.
Special Issue of Pediatric Research presents updates in the science of infectious diseases in children.
The bacteria responsible for chronic infections in cystic fibrosis patients use one of the sugars on the germs' surface to start building a structure that helps the microbes resist efforts to kill them, new research shows.
World Malaria Day is Saturday, April 25. If you're looking for experts to speak about malaria control efforts in Africa, Dr. John Chimumbwa is available.
An Auburn University professor has received a $424,000 National Science Foundation grant for research in the fight against infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and anthrax, as well as staph infections. Evert Duin, an assistant professor of biochemistry in the College of Sciences and Mathematics, is focusing his research on the different steps that biological cells use in making a group of lipids, called isoprenoids. These are fatty substances that are essential for the survival of all organisms including humans.
A Department of Homeland Security-sponsored environmental health scientist has given some of his best years to spittle.
For years, microbiologist Stephen Beverley, Ph.D., has tried to get the disease-causing parasite Leishmania in the mood for love. In this week's Science, he and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health report that they may have finally found the answer: Cram enough Leishmania into the gut of an insect known as the sand fly, and the parasite will have sex.
Lack of the phosphate can turn Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common bacterium, into a killer, according to new research. The findings could lead to new drugs that would disarm the increasingly antibiotic-resistant pathogen rather than attempting to kill it. P. aeruginosa is a serious hospital-acquired pathogen. Why it suddenly turns on its host has eluded researchers"”until now.
An urgently needed new tuberculosis vaccine cleared a vital step in testing, an important advance at time when a third of the world's population is believed to be have latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI), which, when re-activated, can cause full-blown disease.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that parasites hijack host-cell proteins to ensure their survival and proliferation, suggesting new ways to control the diseases they cause.
The current vaccine against pneumococcal bacteria is effective, but vaccines that "cover" additional strains could further reduce pneumococcal infections in infants and toddlers, according to an Israeli study in the April issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
Whitehead Institute researchers have found a large number of new prions, greatly expanding scientists' notion of how important prions might be in normal biology and demonstrating that they play many and varied roles in the inheritance of biological traits.
Researchers at the University of Illinois report that IDO, an enzyme found throughout the body and long suspected of playing a role in depression, is in fact essential to the onset of depressive symptoms sparked by chronic inflammation.
A team of University of Maryland scientists has paved the way for the development of new drug therapies to combat active and asymptomatic (latent) tuberculosis infections by characterizing the unique structure and mechanism of an enzyme in M. tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes the disease.
Research in Public Library of Science (PLoS) Pathogens appears to solve a long standing medical mystery by identifying a viral protein, VP16, as the molecular key that prompts herpes simplex virus (HSV) to exit latency and cause recurrent disease.
An innovative new device created by researcher's at Children's Hospital Boston uses magnetism to quickly pull disease pathogens out of an infected bloodstream. The device could become a first-line defense for blood infections like sepsis, which causes over 200,000 deaths in the US per year.
For critically ill patients in intensive care units, use of a sponge containing the antimicrobial agent chlorhexidine gluconate as part of the dressing for catheters reduced the risk of major catheter-related infections, according to a study in the March 25 issue of JAMA. The researchers also found that reducing the frequency of changing unsoiled dressings from every three days to seven days appears to be safe.
In a Perspective published in the March 12, 2009 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, Richard L. Guerrant, M.D., and Eric D. Mintz, M.D., emphasize that cholera is easy to prevent and simple to treat, yet in Zimbabwe alone there have been an estimated 73,000 cases and 3,500 deaths since November 2008.
University of Adelaide researchers have shown they can predict the biggest population peaks of disease-carrying mosquitoes up to two months ahead.
March 24, 2009, will mark World TB Day. On this day around the world, the public health and scientific community will raise public awareness about tuberculosis and the challenges that remain in controlling it globally, such as the urgent need to develop new TB diagnostic, treatment and prevention tools.
Researchers have identified the genetic machinery responsible for synthesizing thiostrepton, a powerful antibiotic produced by certain bacteria. The drug is effective against the dangerous MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci.
Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and The University of Pittsburgh have developed an onsite method to quickly diagnose tuberculosis (TB) and expose the deadly drug-resistant strains that can mingle undetected with treatable TB strains.
A new vaccine has the potential to be the first to prevent maternal and congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, according to a University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) study published in the March 19 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Drugs that work by blocking the function of a protein from the outside also disrupt the protein's internal workings, according to new research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is one of medicine's most vexing challenges. In a study described in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University are developing a new generation of antibiotic compounds that do not provoke bacterial resistance.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have for the first time identified a molecular pathway that triggers an immune response in multiple mosquito species capable of stopping the development of Plasmodium falciparum-the parasite that causes malaria in humans.
Virginia Commonwealth University Life Sciences researchers have discovered a new mechanism the malaria parasite uses to enter human red blood cells, which could lead to the development of a vaccine cocktail to fight the mosquito-borne disease.
A UMDNJ study shows one in three stethoscopes used by EMS providers is infected with MRSA. Study author Dr. Mark Merlin said, "There's a simple solution for this potentially serious problem. Provide isopropyl alcohol wipes at hospital emergency room entrances so EMS professionals can clean their stethoscopes regularly."
A newly discovered receptor in a strain of Escherichia coli might help explain why people often get sicker when they're stressed.
Two highly lethal viruses that have emerged in recent outbreaks are susceptible to chloroquine, an established drug used to prevent and treat malaria, according to a new basic science study by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in the Journal of Virology. Due to the study's significance, a manuscript was published yesterday online, in advance of the print issue, and will be highlighted as an editor's "spotlight" in the first May issue.
Rates of meningitis have decreased in Canadian provinces introducing routine immunization of children and adolescents against one specific strain of meningococcal bacteria, reports a study in the March issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
Loyola researchers help answer what Clostridium difficile toxin causes disease in humans.
A combination of two FDA-approved drugs, already approved for fighting other bacterial infections, shows potential for treating extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), the most deadly form of the infection.
Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified human monoclonal antibodies (mAb) that neutralize an unprecedented range of influenza A viruses, including avian influenza A (H5N1) virus, previous pandemic influenza viruses, and some seasonal influenza viruses. These antibodies have the potential for use in combination with other treatments to prevent or treat certain types of avian and seasonal flu.
Bacteria that cause urinary tract infections (UTIs) make more tools for stealing from their host than friendly versions of the same bacteria found in the gut, providing a potential way for researchers to target the bad bacteria without adversely affecting the good strains.
Scientists will use research on two continents to develop models for predicting where and when the risk of mosquito-borne diseases is greatest.
In contrast to the perception that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bloodstream infections associated with use of a catheter is an increasing problem in intensive care unit (ICU) patients, the incidence of this type of infection decreased by nearly 50 percent from 1997 - 2007, according to a study in the February 18 issue of JAMA.
A "5-in-1" combination vaccine increases the percentage of children receiving all recommended vaccinations at the scheduled time, reports a study in the February issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
Scientists in China are reporting development and testing of new self-sanitizing plaster with more powerful antibacterial effects than penicillin. The material could be used in wall coatings, paints, art works and other products.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified a protein that may help give Lyme disease its bite.
Even the most drug-resistant fungi can be eradicated in multiple in vitro and in vivo models using a lethal combination of an antifungal agent and inhibition of a specific heat shock protein (Hsp90). Such findings could point to a novel approach for the development of future antifungal therapies for patients with compromised immune systems, including HIV, chemotherapy, and organ transfer patients.
Antiretroviral drug therapy in an HIV-positive man or women can alone help prevent the transmission of HIV to an uninfected partner, regardless of counseling, the patient's use of condoms or other safe-sex practices, AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins report.
Johns Hopkins and Ugandan scientists say counting the number of HIV viruses in the blood rather than relying solely on counting the number of circulating HIV-fighting CD4 immune system cells is a far better way to uncover early signs that antiretroviral drugs are losing their punch, and to signal the need to get patients on more potent treatments to keep the disease in check.
In animal studies, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Yale University have identified molecular interactions that govern the immune system's ability to defend the brain against West Nile virus, offering the possibility that drug therapies could be developed to improve success in treating West Nile and other viral forms of encephalitis, a brain inflammation illness that strikes healthy adults and the elderly and immunocompromised.
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