Feature Channels: Infectious Diseases

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Adults with HIV in rural sub-Saharan Africa who receive antiretroviral drugs early in their infection may reap benefits in their ability to work and their children's ability to stay in school, according to a first-of-its-kind clinical study in Uganda that compared socioeconomic outcomes with CD4+ counts—a standard measure of health status for people with HIV.

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Researchers from Tufts University show how a common fungus can adjust its physiology to become harmful in a host with compromised immune status. The study is the first to demonstrate that the hospitality of the host alters gene expression in the fungus Candida albicans.

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Population-wide levels of HIV virus dropped substantially between 2011 and May 2012 in a rural part of southwestern Uganda, the site of two community health campaigns led by doctors at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) and Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

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In January, 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued new guidelines on dosing of an HIV medication used to treat people infected with both HIV and tuberculosis (TB) because of a potential interaction between two of the main drugs used to treat each disease.

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A clinical study in a remote region of southwest Uganda has demonstrated the feasibility of using a health campaign to rapidly test a community for HIV and simultaneously offer prevention and diagnosis for a variety of other diseases in rural and resource-poor settings of sub-Saharan Africa.

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An ongoing clinical study in rural Uganda, begun in 2011, suggests that many people infected with HIV/AIDS would take antiretroviral drugs if they were available to them—even before they developed symptoms from the disease.

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The percentage of HIV patients taking antiretroviral drugs who experienced the full benefit of the drugs jumped from 45 percent of 72 percent during the past decade, a figure that is lower than previous estimates. The findings, considered important for HIV prevention efforts, since patients whose virus is in tight control are less likely to transmit the infection to others, are published this week in JAMA by a team of researchers led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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Compared to the general population, HIV-positive women have a high risk of cervical cancer and thus are advised to undergo more frequent screening tests. This creates a burden for HIV-positive patients and the health care system, leading to frequent biopsies, which often do not reveal clinically relevant disease.

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Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Makerere University in Uganda have used hair and blood samples from three-month old infants born to HIV-positive mothers to measure the uninfected babies’ exposure—both in the womb and from breast-feeding—to antiretroviral medications their mothers were taking. The results, they said, are surprising.

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An international team of scientists, led by researchers from the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have identified the first reported inhibitors of a key enzyme involved in survival of the parasite responsible for malaria. Their findings, which may provide the basis for anti-malarial drug development, are currently published in the online version of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

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Silymarin, an extract of milk thistle commonly used to treat chronic liver disease by millions of people around the World, does not offer significant improvements for patients, according to a new study conducted by a nationwide group of researchers including faculty at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

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It's been a good week forHIV/AIDS breakthroughs. Tuesday, the FDA approved Truvada. Now, a research team has developed a long-lasting injection that could someday replace the daily regimen of pills faced by patients.

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Scientists from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) have developed a new preparation method that renders a virus or bacterium non-infectious while preserving its immune-boosting ability after exposure to gamma radiation. A lethally irradiated vaccine was successfully tested in mice against drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria by colleagues at the National Institutes of Health and holds promise for other such deadly diseases.

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Only 45 percent of adults would support state laws allowing the HPV vaccination without parental consent, according to the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health.

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Use of the botanical product silymarin, an extract of milk thistle that is commonly used by some patients with chronic liver disease, did not provide greater benefit than placebo for patients with treatment-resistant chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection

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A new multicenter trial finds that taking silymarin (milk thistle) has no effect on serum ALT or levels of the hepatitis C virus in people with chronic hepatitis C infection.

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Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute have genetically modified a bacterium commonly found in the mosquito’s midgut and found that the parasite that causes malaria in people does not survive in mosquitoes carrying the modified bacterium.

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Helper cells traditionally thought to only assist killer white blood cells may be the frontline warriors when battling hepatitis A infection. These are the findings from a Nationwide Children’s Hospital study appearing in a recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

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Despite ongoing public health efforts, E. coli outbreaks continue to infiltrate the food supply, annually causing significant sickness and death throughout the world. But the research community is gaining ground. In a major finding, published today in the scientific journal Nature, researchers from the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology have discovered a molecule’s previously unknown role in fighting off E. coli and other bacterial infections, a discovery that could lead to new ways to protect people from these dangerous microorganisms.

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Her passport is stamped with exotic locations: Myanmar, Tibet, South Africa, Vietnam, and Cambodia, as well as Baltimore, MD. But, when Carrie Tudor, PhD, MPH, RN, looks at it, she sees global battlefields in the fight against infectious disease.

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A mysterious disease that has killed nearly 60 children in Cambodia has been identified by the World Health Organization as enterovirus 71. This virus is one among a family of viruses that cause a variety of illnesses, including a common childhood illness called hand, foot and mouth disease, but Andrew Bonwit, MD, pediatric infectious disease specialist at Loyola University Health System, says a fatal outcome from such illness is rare.

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Humans have known for centuries that copper is a potent weapon against infection. New research shows that the bacteria that cause serious urinary tract infections “know” this, too, and steal copper to prevent the metal from being used against them.

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Northern states could face longer outbreak seasons than the Southern region.

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A Johns Hopkins expert in the drug treatment of HIV disease and AIDS is spearheading an international effort to radically shift the manufacturing and prescribing of combination therapies widely credited in the last decade for keeping the disease in check for 8 million of the 34 million infected people worldwide.

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Study shows that the liquid coating the airways is more acidic in newborn pigs with cystic fibrosis than in healthy newborn pigs. The increased acidity reduces the ability of the liquid to kill bacteria. Making the airway liquid less acidic restores bacterial killing in CF airways to almost normal levels.

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In analysis that included more than 9 million Department of Defense nonactive and active duty personnel, the rates of both community-onset and hospital-onset methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia decreased from 2005 to 2010, while the proportion of community-onset skin and soft tissue infections due to MRSA has more recently declined.

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A paper recently published in Dermato-Endocrinology indicates that raising vitamin D concentrations among hospital patients has the potential to greatly reduce the risk of hospital-acquired infections.

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The Departments of Homeland Security and Agriculture have developed a novel vaccine for one of the seven strains of the dreaded Foot-and-Mouth Disease, paving the way for the development of the others.

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The College of American Pathologists (CAP) and the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology (ASCCP) jointly issued The Lower Anogenital Squamous Terminology (LAST) Standardization Project for HPV-Associated Lesions: Background and Consensus Recommendations.

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Studies led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital show that a protein working on the frontlines of the immune response dampens inflammation and might offer a completely new approach to fighting bacterial infections.

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Being a parent reduces your risk of catching a cold—possibly because of unknown "psychological or behavioral differences between parents and nonparents," according to a study in the July issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

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Inhibiting a key immune response in mice during initial multi-drug treatment for tuberculosis could — paradoxically — shorten treatment time for the highly contagious lung infection according to new research from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and the Center for TB Research.

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An investigation led by UCSF has found that the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission is increased three fold for women with bacterial vaginosis, a common disorder in which the normal balance of bacteria in the vagina is disrupted.

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Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of South Florida and the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg have found that having antibodies for cutaneous types of human papillomavirus (HPV), coupled with sun exposure (ultraviolet radiation) or poor tanning ability, can act “synergistically” in the development of non-melanoma skin cancers such as basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC).

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A two- or three-drug combination given within 48 hours of birth to infants born of HIV-positive mothers can reduce the risk of intrapartum HIV acquisition by about half, compared to AZT alone.

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The bacteria that cause urinary tract infections may take advantage of a cellular waste disposal system that normally helps fight invaders, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

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Commensal bacteria are essential to fight off viral infections.

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“Beads on a string” approach may reduce cost and development time for agents that neutralize and clear pathogenic molecules

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Although breastfeeding is attributed to a significant number of HIV infections in infants, most breastfed babies are not infected with HIV, despite prolonged and repeated exposure. HIV researchers have been left with a conundrum: does breast milk transmit the virus or protect against it? New research from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine explores this paradox in a humanized mouse model, demonstrating that breast milk has a strong virus killing effect and protects against oral transmission of HIV.

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Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified the primary player of the biochemical bugle call that musters the body’s defenders against viral infection.

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It seems logical that programs to screen and manage depression in pregnant, HIV-positive Medicaid patients should already be in place, but they aren't.

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Nearly one-half of infants with GBS meningitis experience developmental delays.

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A Texas Tech University expert studies ways to overcome diseases such as Chagas with researchers from Meharry Medical College and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He can discuss what progress has been made with finding the next generation of treatments for the disease.

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Scientists have found new genetic information that shows how harmful bacteria cause the acute diarrheal disease shigellosis, which kills more than a million people worldwide each year.

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The world needs new antibiotics to overcome the ever-increasing resistance of disease-causing bacteria – but it doesn’t need the side effect that comes with some of the most powerful ones now available: hearing loss. Researchers report they have developed a new approach to designing antibiotics that kill even “superbugs” but spare the inner ear.

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26.7 percent of homeless adults tested and surveyed in downtown Los Angeles' skid row were infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) — more than 10 times the 2 percent rate among the general U.S. population. 46.1 percent of them were unaware that they were infected. Four percent were HIV-positive.

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An enzyme that has long been considered relatively useless to the immune response instead has an important role in setting up immune cells to kill infection-causing bacteria.

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A new study may help clarify why some people infected with HIV are better able to control the virus. It may also pinpoint a target for treatment during early HIV infection aimed at increasing the supply of certain immune cells in the gut.

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For the first time, researchers have determined the function of a series proteins within the mosquito that transduce a signal that enables the mosquito to fight off infection from the parasite that causes malaria in humans. Together, these proteins are known as immune deficiency (Imd) pathway signal transducing factors, are analogous to an electrical circuit. As each factor is switched on or off it triggers or inhibits the next, finally leading to the launch of an immune response against the malaria parasite.

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Study finds superinfection may be as common as initial HIV infection and is not limited to high risk-populations.