Research published in PNAS shows long-term response to strep throat on a genome-wide level, shedding light on how strep interacts with and circumvents the immune system.
A new paper in the February 17th edition of the journal Molecular Cell describes how exposure to low levels of antibiotics increases mutations in E. coli and Staphylococcus bacteria hundreds of times more than normal, making the creation of drug-resistant strains more likely.
A signaling protein that is key in orchestrating the body’s overall immune response has an important localized role in fighting bacterial infection and inflammation in the intestinal tract, according to a study by UC San Diego School of Medicine investigators, published in the journal Cell Host and Microbe.
Saint Louis University physician offers tips for differentiating and treating two common winter ailments.
In the wake of Johns Hopkins’ success in virtually eliminating intensive-care unit bloodstream infections via a simple five-step checklist, the safety scientist who developed and popularized the tool warns medical colleagues that they are no panacea.
Scientists at Vanderbilt and Yale universities have successfully transplanted most of the “nose” of the mosquito that spreads malaria into frog eggs and fruit flies and are employing these surrogates to combat the spread of the deadly and debilitating disease that afflicts 500 million people.
A campaign that makes seasonal flu vaccinations for hospital staff free, convenient, ubiquitous and hard to ignore succeeds fairly well in moving care providers closer to a state of “herd” immunity and protecting patients from possible infection transmitted by health care workers, according to results of a survey at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.
A leading immunology research institute has validated the long-held and controversial hypothesis that antibodies – usually the “good guys” in the body’s fight against viruses – instead contribute to severe dengue virus-induced disease, the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology announced today. The finding has major implications for the development of a first-ever vaccine against dengue virus, a growing public health threat which annually infects 50 to 100 million people worldwide, causing a half million cases of the severest form.
The results of an innovative study to understand what factors may influence who contracts tuberculosis (TB)/HIV co-infection in San Diego show a significant shift in the ethnic makeup of the disease, with the majority of cases now coming from the Hispanic community.
A team of scientists, led by a virologist from the University of California, San Diego’s Center for AID Research (CFAR), has discovered the origin of strains of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) among men who have sex with men. The study, which may be important in developing prevention strategies for HIV, will appear in Science Translational Medicine on February 10, 2010.
Degree candidates will work with a number of nationally know scientists and physicians performing leading-edge, bench-to-bedside medical research.
As a pivotal paper linking childhood vaccinations to autism is discredited, a new study finds no evidence that the measles vaccine—given alone or as part of a combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine—increases the risk of autism in children. The study appears in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have signed a license agreement with Genentech, a wholly owned member of the Roche group, and Roche, that grants the companies exclusive rights to manufacture, develop and market human monoclonal antibodies to treat and protect against group 1 influenza viruses.
The first head-to-head comparison of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies produced from plants versus antibodies produced from mammalian cells has shown that plant-produced antibodies fight infection equally well. The less expensive approach shows potential for treating disease in developing nations.
1) Cigarette smokers may have heightened cancer awareness, making them more open to vaccination for cancer prevention; 2) Physical activity also associated with greater vaccine acceptance; 3) Users of complementary and alternative therapy are less accepting of vaccine.
The state of Michigan, which used a five-step checklist developed at Johns Hopkins to virtually eliminate bloodstream infections in its hospitals’ intensive care units , has been able to keep the number of these common, costly and potentially lethal infections near zero — even three years after first adopting the standardized procedures. A report on the work is being published in the February 20 issue of BMJ (British Medical Journal).
Making flu shots mandatory in 2008 dramatically increased the vaccination rate among St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare’s nearly 26,000 employees to more than 98 percent, according to a report now online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Vaccination against seasonal influenza is safe and produces a protective immune response in infants as young as 6 to 12 weeks, concludes a study in the February issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
A research team led by Mei Hong of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory has determined where an antiviral drug binds to and blocks a channel necessary for the flu virus to spread. The researchers also discovered that the drug spins in the channel, meaning there could be room for developing drugs that do a better job blocking the channel and stopping the flu. The findings are published in the Feb. 4 issue of the journal Nature.
Results from clinical trials conducted in Tanzania show that a new vaccine against tuberculosis, Mycobacterium vaccae (MV), is effective in preventing tuberculosis in people with HIV infection. Findings from the trials, which were conducted by investigators from Dartmouth Medical School in the United States, will be published in the next issue of AIDS, the leading journal in the field of HIV and AIDS research.
Researchers have identified a "broad spectrum" antiviral that is effective against numerous viruses, including HIV-1, influenza A, filoviruses, poxviruses, and others. hey cause some of the world's deadliest diseases, such as AIDS and Ebola.
Institute of Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery will collaborate with Brookhaven National Laboratory on Multidisciplinary Research Project.
Malaria causes more than two million deaths each year, but an expert multinational team battling the global spread of drug-resistant parasites has made a breakthrough in the search for better treatment. Better understanding of the make-up of these parasites and the way they reproduce has enabled an international team, led by John Dalton, a biochemist in McGill’s Institute of Parasitology, to identify a plan of attack for the development of urgently needed new treatments.
Scientists have determined how a normal protein can be converted into a prion, an infectious agent that causes fatal brain diseases in humans and mammals.
A new study suggests that improvements in air quality over the past decade have resulted in fewer cases of ear infections in children.
A preeminent travel-medicine doctor and researcher, David O. Freedman, M.D., has been appointed to WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR) Roster of Experts. The four-year term could mean crisis-related service in Geneva on emergency committees reporting directly to the director-general. Freedman, head of UAB’s Traveler’s Clinic, also co-directs the GeoSentinal global network of travel- and tropical-medicine clinics.
Researchers from NIST and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have completed the first of a series of tests to determine best practices for properly storing and monitoring the temperature of refrigerated vaccines.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Israel's Weizman Institute of Science have found that two antibiotics working together might be more effective in fighting pathogenic bacteria than either drug on its own.
C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health finds H1N1 immunization rates are more than twice the national average if health care providers strongly recommend H1N1 vaccine
A new genome study has provided the first precise explanation of the biological events contributing to deadly epidemics of severe infection. This method can be used to track and help prevent devastating epidemics in the future.
Surprisingly, hepatitis B and C together infect three to five times more Americans than the AIDS virus does. In the next 10 years, these two liver-damaging infections will kill about 150,000 people in the US alone, says a new Institute of Medicine report.
HIV infection or the treatments used to control it are prematurely aging the brain, researchers at have found. Blood flow in the brains of HIV patients is reduced to levels normally seen in uninfected patients 15 to 20 years older.
A viral infection is like an uninvited, tenacious houseguest in the cell, using a range of tricks to prevent its eviction. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified one of the key proteins allowing herpes simplex virus (HSV) DNA to fly under the radar of their hosts' involuntary hospitality.
Systemic pre-exposure administration of antiretroviral drugs provides protection against intravenous and rectal transmission of HIV in mice with human immune systems, according to a new study published January 21, 2010 in the online journal PLoS ONE. “These results provide evidence that a universal approach to prevent all forms of HIV transmission in all settings might be possible,” said J. Victor Garcia-Martinez, Ph.D., professor in the department of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and senior author of the study.
For people who haven't had chickenpox and are exposed to an ill family member, getting vaccinated within five days can reduce the risk of developing chickenpox—or at least reduce the severity of disease, reports a study in the January issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
New research suggests a family of widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs might help protect individuals from serious illness following bacterial infection, including the pneumococcal infections that pose a deadly threat to those with sickle cell disease.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center evaluated data over a 36-year period from the National Hospital Discharge Survey and concluded in a paper appearing in the January issue of Archives of Surgery that appendicitis may be caused by undetermined viral infection or infections, said Dr. Edward Livingston, chief of GI/endocrine surgery at UT Southwestern and senior author of the report.
Scientists at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) in San Antonio have for the first time developed a highly sensitive means of detecting the seven types of botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) simultaneously. The finding may lead to improved techniques for testing water and food supplies should BoNTs be used as a bioterrorism weapon.
Expert at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center provide insight to parents based on what we've learned about about the HPV vaccine in the past four years.
"Immunization is the best defense we have to prevent the spread of H1N1 influenza in the months ahead," says Richard Whitley, the director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and current president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). The reminder comes during National Influenza Vaccination Week, Jan. 10-16.
New schedule includes formal recommendations that children older than 6 months get the H1N1 influenza vaccine to guard against swine flu, and that combination vaccines are generally preferred over separate injections, says UAB's David Kimberlin, a member of the AAP's infectious disease committee.
It is not too late for those who have not been immunized against the novel H1N1 influenza A virus or seasonal influenza to protect themselves from a potentially serious and possibly fatal illness. “Flu is very unpredictable,” said Dr. Peter Wenger, an associate professor in the departments of Preventive Medicine & Community Health and Pediatrics at the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School. Another wave of widespread flu illness could occur as the winter progresses, possibly even into March or April, he added. “The prudent course is to protect yourself and those around you, and the best way to do that is through vaccination,” he said. National Influenza Vaccination Week , which runs Jan. 10-16, 2010, is a great time to take action.
Lessons learned from the first 13 children at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center to become critically ill from the H1N1 virus show that although all patients survived, serious complications developed quickly, unpredictably, with great variations from patient to patient and with serious need for vigilant monitoring and quick treatment adjustments.
High antiretroviral therapy adherence, which is shown to be a major predictor of HIV disease progression and survival, is now associated with lower health care costs, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers examined the effect of antiretroviral therapy adherence on direct health care costs and found that antiretroviral therapy improves health outcomes for people infected with HIV, saving a net overall median monthly health care cost of $85 per patient.
Researchers have identified two cellular proteins that are important factors in hepatitis C virus infection, a finding that may result in the approval of new and less toxic treatments for the disease, which can lead to liver cancer and cirrhosis.
Closing schools for less than two weeks during an influenza epidemic has no effect on infection rates, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, RTI International and the Allegheny County Health Department.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered that a single atom – a calcium, in fact – can control how bacteria walk. The finding identifies a key step in the process by which bacteria infect their hosts, and could one day lead to new drug targets to prevent infection.
Scientists recently discovered a simple gene mutation that decreases the chance people will get a flesh-eating disease called necrotizing fasciitis. Further, they proved that inactivating this section of the gene lessens the devastating disease in humans.
Cleaning hands with either soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizers can effectively prevent the spread of bacterial or viral infections.
Just like teenagers at a prom, proteins are tended by chaperones whose job it is to prevent unwanted interactions among immature clients. And at the molecular level, just as at the high school gym level, it's a job that usually requires a lot of energy.
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