A new research review finds that a combination drug and the common antibiotic doxycycline allow travelers to fend off malaria with the fewest side effects in areas where the parasite is resistant to a widely accepted preventive treatment.
According to a new Harris poll, when encountered by a public restroom without soap or towels, 74% of people who use public restrooms say they would rinse their hands with water and let them air dry. However, LifeBridge Health experts stress that this action is meaningless without soap.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University a four-year, $7.2 million grant to develop a microbicide-releasing vaginal ring to prevent HIV transmission.
Researchers at Iowa State University have identified an enzyme that helps make tuberculosis resistant to a human's natural defense system. Researchers have also found a method to possibly neutralize that enzyme, which may someday lead to a cure for tuberculosis, a contagious disease that kills 1.5 to 2 million people worldwide annually.
Surgical masks appear to be no worse than, and nearly as effective as N95 respirators in preventing influenza in health care workers, according to a study released early online today by JAMA. The study was posted online ahead of print because of its public health implications. It will be published in the November 4 issue of JAMA.
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a very common virus that causes severe respiratory illness in a small percentage of infants. Which babies will develop severe RSV illness? Low levels of certain types of immune system cells may have an impact, according to a study in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that non-AIDS-defining malignancies such as anal and lung cancer have become more prevalent among HIV-infected patients than non-HIV patients since the introduction of anti-retroviral therapies in the mid-1990s.
A Johns Hopkins scientist who proposes to manipulate forces to activate enzymes in live cells, and a second researcher who has developed a way to hunt down tuberculosis germs with real-time imaging have received a total of $4 million in special awards from the National Institutes of Health.
UNC expert available to discuss latest development in search for AIDS vaccine.
Researchers found that a common kitchen spice contains an active component that reduces the deadliness of the Escherichia coli O157 toxin, according to a new study in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists. E. coli O157 toxins cause abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea, acute renal failure and gastrointestinal bleeding.
Active tuberculosis can be rapidly identified in patients with negative sputum tests by a new method, according to European researchers. Active tuberculosis (TB) is the seventh-leading cause of death worldwide, and while the diagnosis of active TB can be rapidly established when the bacteria can be identified on sputum microscopy, in about half of all cases, the TB bacterium cannot be detected, making another diagnostic option critical in efforts to control the spread of TB.
Pathogenic E. coli were pervasive in stream-water samples with low concentrations of fecal indicator bacteria. This is one of the unexpected findings from research published in the Journal of Environmental Quality that may impact we rely on indicator bacteria to determine if water is contaminated with bacteria that can make people sick.
Investigators at Burnham Institute for Medical Research have identified novel cleavage sites for the enzyme caspase-3 (an enzyme that proteolytically cleaves target proteins). Using an advanced proteomic technique called N-terminomics, researchers determined the cleavage sites on target proteins and found, contrary to previous understanding, that caspase-3 targets α-helices as well as unstructured loops.
Four University of Arkansas researchers will look at ways to prevent and treat the influenza virus thanks to a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
A person, usually a child, dies of rabies every 20 minutes. However, only one inoculation may be all it takes for rabies vaccination, according to new research published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases by researchers at the Jefferson Vaccine Center.
More than seventy percent of people who contract Hepatitis C will live with the virus that causes it for the rest of their lives and some will develop serious liver disease including cancer. However, 30 to 40 percent of those infected somehow defeat the infection and get rid of the virus with no treatment. In this week’s Advanced Online Publication at Nature, Johns Hopkins researchers working as part of an international team report the discovery of the strongest genetic alteration associated with the ability to get rid of the infection.
A team of scientists led by researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College has identified compounds that inhibit that mechanism -- without damaging human cells.
A wireless, credit-card-sized sensor that can detect whether health care workers have properly washed their hands upon entering a patient’s room is being studied at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center.
Researchers in Zimbabwe have enrolled the first participants into a novel clinical trial testing whether some of the same antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV can also prevent it in women. About 5,000 women in sub-Saharan Africa will take part in the study.
New research on flu exposure.
As cold and flu season get underway, breaking poor eating habits can not only prevent sickness, but also give you more energy, make you feel better about yourself, and help you live a healthier life. Ara DerMarderosian, PhD, professor of pharmacognosy for University of the Sciences in Philadelphia and an expert in nutraceuticals and natural foods, provides guidance to change how you eat and break habits that pack on the pounds and compromise immunity.
A new study published in the September 15, 2009, issue of PLoS ONE found that patients with cavitary pulmonary tuberculosis receiving anti-TB medications supplemented with nebulized interferon-gamma have fewer bacilli in the lungs and less inflammation, thereby reducing the transmissibility of tuberculosis in the early phase of treatment.
The Medical College of Wisconsin’s Center for AIDS Intervention Research (CAIR) received a five-year, $11.16 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to continue its HIV prevention research.
Michelle Steward, assistant professor of marketing at Wake Forest University, and several colleagues conducted an experiment with women, ages 18 to 30, and found that the women were more likely to consider being vaccinated for HPV after participating in a survey than as a result of commercial advertising or a government mandate.
A suspected case of H1N1 reported on the ISU campus this week led one professor to alter the curriculum of her class on communicable diseases. Students are now working to educate the campus about the disease.
An aggressive vaccination program that first targets children and ultimately reaches 70 percent of the U.S. population would mitigate pandemic influenza H1N1 that is expected this fall, according to computer modeling and analysis of observational studies conducted by researchers at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute (VIDI) at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
A new study published in the September 11, 2009 issue of Science by researchers at the NYU School of Medicine reveals a conceptually novel mechanism that plays an important role in making human pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus anthracis resistant to numerous antibiotics.
Chemical additive may turn back the clock for many old antibiotics that have lost effectiveness from overuse.
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers have found that the cost of preventive antibiotic tuberculosis (TB) therapy for patients infected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is generally less expensive than the reported cost of treating newly confirmed TB cases.
Loyola infectious disease physician, researcher says major differences in medicine exist between the Spanish Flu era and today
Plants that live in the soil don't live alone -- a mere teaspoon of soil teems with an estimated billion microscopic organisms. Yet comparatively little is known about which of these tiny organisms interact with plants or how they may affect plant performance and crop yields. University of Delaware researchers are working to 'root out' the answer through a novel project on rice.
Giving critically ill hospital patients a daily bath with a mild, soapy solution of the same antibacterial agent used by surgeons to “scrub in” before an operation can dramatically cut down, by as much as 73 percent, the number of patients who develop potentially deadly bloodstream infections, according to a new study by patient safety experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and five other institutions.
The National Institutes of Health’s Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study adds new research expertise to increase its capacity to simulate disease spread, evaluate different intervention strategies and help inform public health officials and policymakers.
Findings reveal an achilles heel on the virus for AIDS vaccine researchers to exploit.
Scientists have deciphered a key molecular circuit that enables the body to distinguish viruses from bacteria and other microbes, providing a deep view of how immune cells in mammals fend off different pathogens.
Researchers from the UNC Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases have received $2.7 million from the National Institutes of Health to discover drugs that can completely “purge” HIV from the system, including the reservoirs where it hides from current antiviral therapy.
Giving insecticide-treated bed nets to nearly 18,000 mothers at prenatal clinics in the Democratic Republic of Congo prevented an estimated 414 infant deaths from malaria, a study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers concludes.
Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have discovered a key mechanism behind the survival instinct of tuberculosis. TB is the leading cause of death in the world from a single bacterial infection, and it kills 1.5 million people per year.
Patients infected with a particular subtype of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are more likely to develop dementia than patients with other subtypes, a study led by Johns Hopkins researchers shows. The finding, reported in the September Clinical Infectious Diseases, is the first to demonstrate that the specific type of HIV has any effect on cognitive impairment, one of the most common complications of uncontrolled HIV infection.
A vaccine to prevent infections with pneumococcal bacteria is helping to reduce the rate of ear tube placement for chronic middle ear infections in Australian children, suggests a report in the September issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
Researchers at Burnham Institute for Medical Research, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and University of Maryland have demonstrated that an enzyme that is essential to many bacteria can be targeted to kill dangerous pathogens. In addition, investigators discovered chemical compounds that can inhibit this enzyme and suppress the growth of pathogenic bacteria. These findings are essential to develop new broad-spectrum antibacterial agents to overcome multidrug resistance.
One-half of all infants are infected with RSV during the first year of life. Researchers at West Virginia University have discovered what makes RSV such a severe and persistent illness. The team discovered that RSV prompts the release of a molecule that keeps the invaded cells alive despite the infection.
Whitehead Institute researchers have shown definitively that mutations associated with prion diseases are sufficient to cause a transmissible neurodegenerative disease. Deciphering the origins of prion diseases could help determine how best to control a prion disease outbreak in livestock and to prevent prion transmission to humans.
Infection with an antimicrobial-resistant strain of typhoid fever among patients in the United States is associated with international travel, especially to the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), according to a study in the August 26 issue of JAMA. The study also shows an increase in certain strains of typhoid fever that are resistant to the most commonly used medications for treatment.
Smoking is a risk factor for active tuberculosis (TB) disease, according to a new study on TB incidence in Taiwan.
Research reported in Nature Immunology points toward potential immune therapies for individuals at high risk for RSV and flu, two common respiratory viruses. This could benefit infants, children, the elderly and persons with compromised immune systems.
Immunology researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that bacteria present in the human gut help initiate the body’s defense mechanisms against Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite responsible for toxoplasmosis.
Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System mapped out a three-dimensional structure of the enzyme protein BA2930, which is produced by the bacteria responsible for anthrax, Bacillus anthracis. They did so by using X-ray crystallography, a technique that provides a three-dimensional snapshot of the arrangement of atoms in a protein.
With the help of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and molecular engineering, researchers have designed synthetic protein-like mimics convincing enough to interrupt unwanted biological conversations between cells.
The grant enables investigators to focus, expand their research goals and explore new ideas through collaboration and shared resources available to HIV teams. The UAB CFAR supports research on disease prevention and treatment in AIDS patients and also strengthens the capacity for HIV research in developing countries such as Africa, said the center director.
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