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.
Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered how a deadly microbe evades the human immune system and causes disease.
Rajesh Gokhale has created a compound in his lab in India that stops tuberculosis by hitting four of the bacterium's crucial metabolic pathways at the same time, weakening and ultimately destroying the pathogen. While his compound is not ready for use in humans, Gokhale said it is a step toward a single drug that targets multiple pathways, which could save time and money over the current multi-drug treatment for TB.
A century-old drug that failed in its original intent to treat tuberculosis but has worked well as an antileprosy medicine now holds new promise as a potential therapy for multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases.
Researchers seeking ways to defeat malaria have found a way to get help from the parasite that causes the disease. They let one of the deadliest strains of malaria do a significant portion of the genetic engineering work in their new study.
As global warming raises concerns about potential spread of infectious diseases, a team of researchers has demonstrated a way to predict the expanding range of human disease vectors in a changing world.
The first study documenting methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in swine and swine workers in the United States has been published by University of Iowa researchers. The investigators found a strain of MRSA known as ST398 in a swine production system in the Midwest.
Rich Glynn, a straight-talking entrepreneur from South Dakota, doesn't mince words when explaining why a partnership between his fledgling goose operation and the University of North Dakota is a match made in heaven.
A topical microbicide that silences two genes can safely protect against genital herpes infection for as long as one week, according to a joint study by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Harvard Medical School.
A new research study at the University of Delaware seeks to determine why Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a microorganism that lives in seawater and is related to the bacterium that causes cholera, is expanding its range and virulence. Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a leading cause of seafood-borne illness worldwide, most frequently associated with the consumption of raw or undercooked seafood, particularly oysters and other mollusks, and crabs. Victims typically suffer from diarrhea, vomiting, fever and chills for a few days, although the infection can be fatal in those with weakened immune systems.
Researchers have created a credit-card sized tool can be stored for months and then used to test for malaria--part of a larger project to develop high-tech tools for global health. The prototype dehydrated the reagents to store them without refrigeration, and delivered a diagnosis in just nine minutes.
A major breakthrough by Junpeng Deng, a structural biologist in the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University, and his first-year Ph.D. student, Brian Krumm, may be the first step towards a pharmaceutical medication for smallpox and the emerging human monkeypox.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute (JHMRI) have identified, for the first time, the molecular components that enable the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium to infect the salivary glands of the Anopheles mosquito"”a critical and final stage for spreading malaria to humans.
Bacteria hunker down and survive antibiotic attack when a protein flips a chemical switch that throws them into a dormant state until treatment abates, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Jan.16 edition of Science.
Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have demonstrated a more effective treatment for bacterial pneumonia following influenza. They found that the antibiotics clindamycin and azithromycin, which kill bacteria by inhibiting their protein synthesis, are more effective than a standard first-line treatment with the "beta-lactam" antibiotic ampicillin, which causes the bacteria to lyse, or burst.
According to University of Pennsylvania pharmacologist Doron Greenbaum, Ph.D., although the exact mechanism by which artemisinin kills parasites is still open to considerable debate, the drug likely acts against one or more biochemical targets that may make it susceptible to resistance that has developed to every other drug that acts via a biochemical mechanism of action. Drug resistance has been shown to occur in the laboratory , and reports have already surfaced about potential resistance in southeast Asia.
Scientists have discovered a new way for bacteria to transfer toxic genes to unrelated bacterial species, a finding that raises the unsettling possibility that bacterial swapping of toxins and other disease-aiding factors may be more common than previously imagined.
By mixing and matching a contemporary flu virus with the "Spanish flu" "” a virus that killed between 20 and 50 million people 90 years ago in history's most devastating outbreak of infectious disease "” researchers have identified a set of three genes that helped underpin the extraordinary virulence of the 1918 virus.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered that compounds derived from a natural product can be used in developing a new drug to treat leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease spread by the bite of infected sand flies.
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine scientist leads comparative analysis of six genomes of Acinetobacter baumannii; First genome sequence to be completed in Cleveland.
Researchers at the University of Maryland are hot on the trail of a universal flu vaccine for animals - which could ultimately help prevent or delay another avian flu pandemic in humans.
Researchers may have identified one of the body's earliest responses to a group of parasites that causes illness in developing nations and is infecting soldiers on patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have determined that the immune-system protein interferon plays a key role in "teaching" the immune system how to fight off repeated infections of the same virus.
SARS "“ severe acute respiratory syndrome "“ alarmed the world five years ago as the first global pandemic of the 21st century. The coronavirus (SARS-CoV) that sickened more than 8,000 people "“ and killed nearly 800 of them "“ may have originated in bats, but the actual animal source is not known.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University Medical Center have synthetically reconstructed the bat variant of the SARS coronavirus (CoV) that caused the SARS epidemic of 2003.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have found evidence of a novel pathway for potential human exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria from intensively raised poultry"”driving behind the trucks transporting broiler chickens from farm to slaughterhouse.
A previously unknown regulatory step during human immunodeficiency (HIV) replication provides a potentially valuable new target for HIV/AIDS therapy, report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
A new class of antimicrobial agent with broad-spectrum activity has been found to also kill Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the most lethal form of human malaria.
A long awaited Canadian study on the effectiveness of universal vaccination for seasonal influenza was published by Canadian researchers yesterday in the open access journal PLoS Medicine. The study was led by Dr. Jeff Kwong, a CIHR-funded researcher at the Institute of Clinical and Evaluative Sciences and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto.
At the upcoming first-ever joint meeting of the American Society for Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (48th Annual ICAAC/IDSA 46th Annual Meeting, October 25-28, 2008, in Washington, D.C.), Emeryville, CA.-based NovaBay Pharmaceuticals presented four posters and an oral presentation regarding the company's topical anti-microbial program.
Three Virginia Commonwealth University epidemiologists are downplaying the value of mandatory universal nasal screening of patients for MRSA, arguing that proven, hospital-wide infection control practices can prevent more of the potentially fatal infections.
UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) researchers have discovered how one highly effective antibiotic finds and destroys its targeted bacteria. The findings could have great implications for combating antibiotic resistance and promoting antibiotic efficiency. In research published online Oct. 22 in Nature, the UAB team pinpointed the place on bacteria where an antibiotic called myxopyronin launches its attack, and why that attack is successful.
A BYU-Harvard-Stanford research team has identified a molecule that is key to mothers' ability to pass along immunity to intestinal infections to their babies through breast milk.
A recombinant vaccine against tuberculosis shows promise, Saint Louis University researchers find.
A new study reveals that specific types of bacteria in the intestine trigger the generation of pro-inflammatory immune cells, a finding that could eventually lead to novel treatments for inflammatory bowel disease and other diseases.
A presentation on October 12 at the INFORMS Annual Meeting will describe pandemic flu models that can help organizations improve their food distribution and school closing strategies in the event of such an emergency. The models are flexible so that multiple scenarios can be investigated to see which options meet an organization's specific goal.
In research aimed at addressing a global epidemic, a team of scientists from around the world has cracked the genetic code for the parasite that is responsible for up to 40 percent of the 515 million annual malaria infections worldwide, Nature reveals in its October 9 cover story.
Hospitalizations for tuberculosis fell from 15,000 in 1995 to 8,800 in 2006. However, the number of hospitalizations for patients who were hospitalized for other conditions but who also had tuberculosis only fell about 10 percent, from 55,500 in 1995 to 49,700 in 2006.
Not only are doctors, nurses, and firefighters essential during a severe pandemic influenza outbreak. So, too, are truck drivers, communications personnel, and utility workers. That's the conclusion of a Johns Hopkins University article to be published in the Journal of Biosecurity and Bioterrorism.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health has established a new Gillings Innovation Lab to track and map tropical infectious diseases such as malaria, using state-of-the-art molecular and demographic methods.
The genome of a humble worm that dines on the microbial organisms covering the carcasses of dead beetles may provide clues to the evolution of parasitic worms, including those that infect humans, say scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany.
Scientists and news organizations typically focus on the number of dead and gravely ill during epidemics, but research at the University of Michigan suggests that less dramatic, mild infections lurking in large numbers of people are the key to understanding cycles of at least one potentially fatal infectious disease: cholera.
Loyola Physicians warn little-known Clostridium difficile next emerging disease threat, killing thousands in the United States.
A bacterial molecule that initially signals to animals that they have been invaded must be wiped out by a special enzyme before an infected animal can regain full health, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.
Mice given quercetin, a naturally occurring substance found in fruits and vegetables, were less likely to contract the flu, according to a new study. The study also found that stressful exercise increased the susceptibility of mice to the flu, but quercetin canceled out that negative effect.
The widely-held perception that the influenza vaccination reduces overall mortality risk in the elderly does not withstand careful scrutiny, according to researchers in Alberta. The vaccine does confer protection against specific strains of influenza, but its overall benefit appears to have been exaggerated by a number of observational studies that found a very large reduction in all-cause mortality among elderly patients who had been vaccinated.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Malaria Research Institute have identified a previously unknown virus that is infectious to Anopheles gambiae"”the mosquito primarily responsible for transmitting malaria.
Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found a potential new way to stop the bacteria that cause gastroenteritis, tularemia and severe diarrhea from making people sick.
An infectious ocean-dwelling bacterium found in oysters and other shellfish kills its host's cells by causing them to burst, providing the invader with a nutrient-rich meal, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.
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