Feature Channels: Infectious Diseases

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Tuberculosis (TB) has been present in humans since ancient times. The origins of the disease date back to the first domestication of cattle, and skeletal remains show prehistoric humans (4,000 B.C.) had TB. Although relatively rare in the United States, it is the single leading bacterial cause of death worldwide. Approximately 8 million people are infected each year and 2 million people die from TB.

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Despite the virtual elimination of syphilis in China in the 1950s, the sexually transmitted infection is currently at epidemic proportions in the country, and rates of infection will continue to grow unless a more comprehensive, coordinated effort of control is implemented, according to a perspective published in the May 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Nausea in pregnant women tends to fade after the first three months, but during the second and third trimesters it can be a sign of flu, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in a study of expectant women who sought medical care.

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Of all the things that might control the onset of disease epidemics in Michigan lakes, the shape of the lakes' bottoms might seem unlikely. But that is precisely the case, and a new BioScience report by scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and four other institutions explains why.

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Byron Brehm-Stecher, an Iowa State University assistant professor of food science and human nutrition, wants to replace the current system of salmonella detection with a new approach that can provide DNA sequencing-like results in hours rather than days. He is using technology available through an Ames, Iowa, company, Advanced Analytical Technologies, Inc., that is providing advanced biomedical instruments and reagents for the research.

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Researchers in British Columbia, Canada, have used a technique known as ecological niche modeling to identify likely areas where a potentially lethal fungus could spread next. Cryptococcus gattii, which can cause life-threatening infections of the lungs and central nervous system when inhaled, infects humans as well as a broad range of wild and domestic animals.

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Men infected with human papillomavirus (HPV) are at greater risk of becoming infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) than men who are not HPV positive, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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A binational team of researchers led by University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that active syphilis infections are significantly greater in female sex workers who inject drugs and share needles than those who don’t.

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A clinical trial of 406 elderly subjects hospitalized with pneumonia showed reductions in length of stay, duration of IV antibiotics and respiratory failure or death in patients who received osteopathic manipulative treatment and conventional medical care when compared to patients who received only conventional medical care.

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A study published April 19, 2010 ahead of print in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) demonstrates that conditions that can support the establishment of Lyme disease have come together in southern Quebec, an area that until now has not sustained the disease.

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Scientists have combined chemistry and biology research techniques to explain how certain bacteria grow structures on their surfaces that allow them to simultaneously cause illness and protect themselves from the body’s defenses.

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St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital staff helps investigators gauge the lingering impact of the 1976 vaccine.

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The H1N1 flu epidemic has lessons to offer health care providers. The limited amount of vaccine available initially left pregnant women, small children with medical conditions, and other high-risk populations waiting in long lines. The problems encountered in reaching certain segments of the population apply to the provision of dental care as well as other disciplines.

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UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have determined how a protein that normally latches onto molecules inside cells and marks them for destruction also gives life to the body’s immune response against viruses.

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A renowned researcher calls for a global commitment to develop 10 new antibiotics by 2020 in a new government health-care blog. Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) President Richard Whitley, M.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, blogs on the dangers of antibiotic resistance and what has become one of the greatest threats to human health.

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Pregnant women had a disproportionately higher risk of death due to 2009 influenza A(H1N1) in the U.S., and early antiviral treatment appeared to be associated with fewer admissions to an ICU and fewer deaths, according to a study in the April 21 issue of JAMA.

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Approximately 7 percent of elementary school children across the bi-state, Kansas City metropolitan area are infected with the fungus Trichophyton tonsurans (T. tonsurans), the leading cause of ringworm in the U.S., according to a new study published today in Pediatrics.

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Biology research shows general health spending offers far better return in most affected areas.

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An analysis of hospitalization records for adults age 65 and over found that seasonal flu tends to move in traveling waves, peaking earliest in western states and moving east. New England states tend to have the latest peak in seasonal flu. The public health research team detected patterns between peak timing and intensity of seasonal flu. The findings may help healthcare providers prepare for flu outbreaks in this vulnerable population.

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Despite national guidelines aimed at improving sexual health services for teenagers, most sexually active boys — even those who report high-risk sexual behaviors — still get too little counseling about HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) during their visits to the doctor, according to a study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

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An analysis of blood samples taken before, during and after an epidemic wave of influenza A(H1N1) in Singapore in 2009 finds variation in infection risks and antibody levels, with younger age groups and military personnel having higher infection rates than other groups, according to a study in the April 14 issue of JAMA.

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In the decade since the introduction of pneumococcal vaccination, significant shifts have occurred in the bacterial strains causing serious pneumococcal infections in children, according to a pair of studies in the April issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

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Whitehead researchers have created novel mouse models of the immune system starting with T cells primed for the infectious disease toxoplasmosis by generating cloned mice from these T cells. This model could be used to reliably study immune cell biology and the role of immune cells in infectious disease.

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The millions of dollars invested by the province of Ontario in its universal flu vaccine campaign saves lives and is a sensible investment, according to an economic analysis by a researcher at the University of Toronto and the University Health Network.

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An approach designed to reduce HIV/STDs previously used exclusively by academic researchers has successfully been implemented by community-based organizations (CBOs), an important component in national strategies to curtail the spread of HIV, meaning far more “at risk” youths can be reached.

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A Saint Louis University researcher tackles the problem that occurs when the influenza vaccine doesn’t match the strain of the virus circulating in the community. He finds adding a second influenza B virus strain likely would improve the vaccine’s ability to prevent the flu.

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New data from a meta-analysis of existing literature published today in CHEST, the official journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, demonstrate that Interferon Gamma Release Assays (IGRAs) are superior to the previous standard in diagnostics, the 100+-year-old tuberculin skin test (TST), for detecting confirmed active TB disease.

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Over the last four years, researchers at RTI International in North Carolina have been transforming data from the 2000 census—which described the country's 281 million people and 116 million households—into a virtual U.S. population. They finished the “synthetic population” last year, and they plan to update it when the 2010 census results come out.

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Two new tuberculosis studies by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers provide good news and bad news about the bacterium that infects nearly a third of the world’s population and a disease that kills nearly 2 million people each year.

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A new study examines the potential influence that the business connections between broiler chicken growers may have on the transmission of avian influenza, H5N1. The risk of between-farm transmission is significantly greater among farms within the same company group than it is between farms with different company affiliation.

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Northeastern research team identifies, for the first time, a mechanism that enables new forms of bacteria to grow in lab.

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Once considered a hospital anomaly, community-acquired infections with drug-resistant strains of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus now turn up regularly among children hospitalized in the intensive-care unit, according to research from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

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A small new study suggests that some common beliefs about the spread of sexually transmitted diseases may not apply to human papillomavirus, also known as HPV.

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Suspecting that a particular protein in tuberculosis was likely to be vital to the bacteria’s survival, Johns Hopkins scientists screened 175,000 small chemical compounds and identified a potent class of compounds that selectively slows down this protein’s activity and, in a test tube, blocks TB growth, demonstrating that the protein is indeed a vulnerable target.

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Fewer than half of all substance abuse treatment facilities surveyed nationwide reported that they conduct on-site infectious disease screening, according to a new study sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

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A team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute and other institutions has solved the structure of a key protein from the virus that caused last year’s “swine flu” influenza epidemic. The structure reveals that the virus shares many features with influenza viruses common in the early 20th century, helping to explain why, in general, older individuals have been less severely affected by the recent outbreak than younger ones.

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A study, published in the April 1 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, found the incidence of CA-MRSA in the Chicago area was six-fold higher among HIV-infected patients than it was among HIV-negative patients.

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March 24, 2010, 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 controlling drug resistant TB and as the urgent need to develop new TB diagnostic, treatment and prevention tools.

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Arnold B. Rabson, MD, professor of Molecular Genetics, Microbiology and Immunology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Pediatrics at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, has been appointed as the second director of the Child Health Institute of New Jersey (CHINJ). Dr. Rabson has served as the interim director for CHINJ since 2007 and was previously deputy director of The Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

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An intensive program of surveillance, precautions, training and feedback in a large multihospital institution appears to be associated with reductions in rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) over a 15-year period, according to a report in the March 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

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Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found two novel ways of killing the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB), a disease responsible for an estimated two million deaths each year.

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Johns Hopkins scientists have found that a safe and inexpensive antibiotic in use since the 1970s for treating acne effectively targets infected immune cells in which HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, lies dormant and prevents them from reactivating and replicating.

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Research led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital investigators identifies potential new targets for treatment of colitis and other inflammatory bowel diseases.

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A multi-institutional five-year study will perform molecular genomics analyses of the disease-causing powers of Chlamydia on a scale never before attempted.

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– Obesity may limit the body’s ability to develop immunity to influenza viruses, particularly secondary infections, by inhibiting the immune system’s ability to “remember” how it fought off previous similar bouts of illness, according to new research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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A potent new inhibitor of HIV, derived from bananas, may open the door to new treatments to prevent sexual transmission of HIV, according to a study by University of Michigan scientists.

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Immunizing children and adolescents with inactivated influenza vaccine resulted in reduced rates of influenza in their community compared to a similar community in which children did not receive the vaccine, suggesting that vaccinating children may help prevent transmission of the virus and offer protection for unimmunized community residents, according to a study in the March 10 issue of JAMA.

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The potentially deadly yellow-fever-transmitting Aedes aegypti mosquito detects the specific chemical structure of a compound called octenol as one way to find a mammalian host for a blood meal.

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A new study led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators disproves reports that well-fed children are more vulnerable to the dengue virus.

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Cornell researchers have found a protein that may lead to a new way to control mosquitoes that spread dengue fever, yellow fever and other diseases when they feed on humans: Prevent them from urinating as they feed on blood. (American Journal of Physiology, March 4, 2010)