Despite nearly three decades of conflict, Sri Lanka has succeeded in reducing malaria cases by 99.9 percent since 1999 and is on track to eliminate the disease entirely by 2014.
Cedars-Sinai researchers have found that a common vitamin may have the potential to provide a powerful weapon to fight certain “superbugs,” antibiotic-resistant staph infections that health experts see as a threat to public health.
A new study suggests that nicotinamide, more commonly known as vitamin B3, may be able to combat some of the antibiotic-resistance staph infections and "superbugs" that are increasingly common around the world, have killed thousands and can pose a significant threat to public health.
Your child goes to bed in perfect health. The next morning she wakes up with high fever, malaise and bright red blisters erupting all over her body. Johns Hopkins Children’s Center dermatologists say the disturbing scenario has become quite common in the last few months, sending scared parents to their pediatrician’s office or straight to the emergency room.
Rather than trying to kill bacteria outright with drugs, Université de Montréal researchers have discovered a way to disarm bacteria that may allow the body's own defense mechanisms to destroy them.
UCSF researchers found that poor HIV-infected individuals living in San Francisco are significantly more likely to visit emergency rooms and to have hospital stays if they lack access to food of sufficient quality and quantity for a healthy life.
A group led by Edward Yu of Iowa State and the Ames Laboratory is studying disease resistance in tuberculosis. The group has described the structure of a regulator that controls the expression of a pump that removes toxins from the bacteria.
Using information about the unique mating practices of the male malaria mosquito - which, unlike any other insect, inserts a plug to seal its sperm inside the female - scientists are zeroing in on a birth-control drug for Anopheles mosquitoes, deadly carriers of the disease that threatens 3 billion people, has infected more than 215 million and kills 655,000 annually.
A University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey expert describes symptoms and ways to protect yourself from the West Nile virus.
• Vancomycin was the most commonly prescribed antibiotic in dialysis patients for treating certain bloodstream infections, but cefazolin was 38% better than vancomycin at preventing hospitalizations and deaths from these infections. • Cefazolin was also 48% better at preventing sepsis. Hundreds of thousands of Americans develop bloodstream infections every year.
Poxviruses, a group of DNA-containing viruses that includes smallpox, are responsible for a wide range of diseases in humans and animals. They are highly virulent and able to cross species barriers, yet how they do so has been largely a mystery because of their low mutation rates.
An international team of researchers has found that certain bioactive components found in human milk are associated with a reduced risk of HIV transmission from an HIV infected mother to her breast-fed infant. Their study will be published in the August 15 online edition of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
New research may help explain why hundreds of thousands of Americans a year get sick – and tens of thousands die – after bacteria get into their blood. It also suggests why some of those bloodstream infections resist treatment with even the most powerful antibiotics.
A major breakthrough in the development of a highly effective vaccine against the deadly Nipah virus -- classified by the CDC and NIH as a biothreat agent -- has been reported by a team of federal and university scientists.
Chronic exposure to even small amounts of staph bacteria could be a risk factor for the chronic inflammatory disease lupus, Mayo Clinic research shows.
In the year since the UAB emergency department began offering HIV screening for all patients ages 19-64, part of a CDC initiative, doctors say 20,000 tests were performed and 72 cases of HIV infection were diagnosed.
Genetic variability revealed in malaria genomes newly sequenced by two multi-national research teams points to new challenges in efforts to eradicate the parasite, but also offers a clearer and more detailed picture of its genetic composition, providing an initial roadmap in the development of pharmaceuticals and vaccines to combat malaria.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital study shows how compounds blocking an enzyme universal to all influenza viruses may allow development of new antiviral drugs that also avoid the problem of drug resistance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Northern states could face longer outbreak seasons than the Southern region.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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