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| Scripps Florida scientists develop a process to disrupt hepatitis C virion production |
| HCV is a significant human pathogen, infecting more than three percent of the world’s population. The incidence of infection in the United States has been estimated to be as high as 4 million cases. In the March issue of the journal PLoS Pathogens, Timothy Tellinghuisen, an assistant professor in the Department of Infectology at Scripps Florida, and his colleagues describe how they used mutations of the viral NS5A phosphoprotein to disrupt virus particle production at an early stage of assembly. NS5A has long been proposed as a regulator of events in the HCV life cycle, but exactly how it orchestrates these events has been unclear. |
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| INHALED TUBERCULOSIS VACCINE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN TRADITIONAL SHOT |
| A novel aerosol version of the most common tuberculosis (TB) vaccine, administered directly to the lungs as an oral mist, offers significantly better protection against the disease in experimental animals than a comparable dose of the traditional injected vaccine, researchers report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. |
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| ORAL SEX LINKED TO MOUTH CANCER |
| Oral sex has been linked to a tiny risk of mouth cancer, an international team of scientists say. |
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| PIERCING THE UPPER EAR MAY BE RISKY |
| Piercings in the upper part of the ear are more likely to get infected than ones in the lobes, say U.S. researchers. |
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| BIRD FLU TESTS MAY OUTDATE QUICKLY |
| Diagnostic tests for the bird flu virus may need to be fine-tuned if the virus mutates quickly, according to Australian scientists. |
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| MAN'S BRAIN INFECTED BY EATING SLUGS |
| A Sydney-based man who ate two garden slugs as a dare during a party narrowly escaped death from a rare form of meningitis, an often fatal swelling around the brain. |
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| DISPUTE OVER TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME |
| A TAMPON maker says it may try to develop a test for genetic susceptibility to toxic shock syndrome, based on the results of a study announced last week. But critics dispute the study's conclusions, and warn that the work might be used to help companies fight lawsuits from women who contract the illness after using tampons. |
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| SARS ORIGIN A MYSTERY, RE-BIRTH FEARED |
| Despite the discovery of animals in a Chinese live-meat market infected with a virus similar to the one that caused the global SARS outbeak, the source of the disease remains a mystery. |
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| SARS COULD MAKE AN UNWELCOME RETURN |
| SARS, the deadly pneumonia-like respiratory disease, could make an unwelcome return to Asia during the northern winter later this year, but experts say governments and health authorities are better prepared. |
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| SARS: LESSONS FROM THE ANIMAL KINGDOM |
| The SARS virus probably originated in animals and may have lost the ability to infect its original host - increasing the possibility it can be eliminated in humans, says a U.S. virus expert. But an animal origin also has implications for the spread of the disease. |
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| SARS HAS PEAKED EVERYWHERE EXCEPT CHINA - WHO |
| Outbreaks of SARS have now peaked in Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam - but not in China, where the virus that causes it emerged and which will be key to halting its global spread. |
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| WHEN PATTING THE DOG CAN SEND YOU BLIND |
| People can become infected from a worm that causes blindness simply by stroking a dog that carries the parasite, according to new research. |
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| ALARM AS KILLER VIRUS SPREADS, RESIDENTS FLEE. |
| Medical teams descended on a Hong Kong apartment block on Tuesday to find out why a virus thought to cause atypical pneumonia has spread like wildfire, as fears grow it has mutated into an airborne infection. |
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| DEADLY NEW PNEUMONIA VIRUS IDENTIFIED |
| Medical experts said the discovery would make the disease easier to diagnose and may have even opened the way for a vaccine to be developed. But more laboratory work was needed to pin down the exact make-up of the virus, and scientists had not ruled out that it might be a novel pathogen. |
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| RAT-BORNE DISEASES ON THE RISE, SCIENTISTS WARN |
| Infectious diseases carried by rats may be a human health time-bomb, researchers warned an international conference in Canberra. |
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| SCIENTISTS DECIPHER GENETIC CODE OF MALARIA PARASITE |
| In a landmark contribution to the age-old battle against malaria, a consortium of scientists including The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) announced today that they have deciphered the complex genetic code of the parasite that causes the deadliest form of the disease. Malaria is one of the world's most devastating infectious diseases, killing more than a million people a year in developing nations. |
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| FIRST DRUG DEVELOPED FOR WIDESPREAD USE AGAINST BOTULISM |
| An eight-year research effort by university and military scientists in the U.S. has produced the first drug that can be mass-produced to prevent or treat botulism, the paralyzing disease caused by a nerve toxin that is considered one of the greatest bioterrorism threats. |
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| INFLUENZA INFECTION ATTRACTS PNEUMONIA BACTERIA |
| Lung cells infected with the influenza A virus are more likely to bind with bacteria that cause pneumonia than uninfected cells, but this phenomenon can be reversed with antiviral treatment. Researchers from the University of Kansas Medical Center present their findings today at the 102nd General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. |
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| 'NATURE' REPORT: RESEARCHERS GENETICALLY ALTER MOSQUITOES TO IMPAIR MALARIA TRANSMISSION |
| Malaria kills about 2 million people annually, mostly African children under the age of 5. While conventional approaches to controlling the disease have been ineffective, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) School of Medicine researchers are developing a genetically altered mosquito that one day could be added to the arsenal in the war against the disease. |
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| THE NEW BIOLOGY OF ROCKS: 'ARE THERE MEDICAL IMPLICATIONS OF GEOMICROBIOLOGY?' |
| If microbial life is found on Mars, will it be native to the planet or something carried there from Earth? Either way, will it be safe to return samples of such organisms to Earth? Astrobiology, the search for life elsewhere, says a University of Illinois microbiologist, is making us look a lot closer at microbial life on Earth – how it adapts and its relationship to emerging infectious diseases. |
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| HARMLESS VIRUS PREVENTS HIV VARIANT FROM SPREADING IN HUMAN TISSUE BLOCKS |
| Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6), a common virus that is apparently harmless in adults, appears to prevent a form of the AIDS virus from reproducing in laboratory cultures of human tissue, according to a study published in the November issue of Nature Medicine. |
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| TYPHOID FEVER BUG SEQUENCE RAISES HOPE OF COMPLETE ERADICATION |
| Scientists from Britain, Denmark and Vietnam have deciphered the genetic code of the bacterium responsible for typhoid fever, Salmonella typhi.
Their achievement, reported in the magazine Nature 23.10.01., raises hope for the prospects of completely eradicating typhoid, which currently claims 600,000 lives a year globally. |
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| EXCESS IRON INTAKE INCREASES RISK OF INTESTINAL INFECTIONS, STUDY SUGGESTS |
| Researchers here believe that an overdose of iron in the nation's diet could be rendering thousands of otherwise healthy people prone to intestinal infection. The scientists found that cells containing high levels of iron were more easily invaded by the bacteria. |
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| NU PROFESSOR WORKS TOWARD A PERMANENTLY GERM-FREE SURFACE: POLYMER GLASS COATING CAPABLE OF KILLING AIRBORNE BACTERIA ON CONTACT |
| Whose hands were on that doorknob before yours? That handrail, pay phone, or subway pole? Kim Lewis, newly appointed professor of biology at Northeastern University in Boston, has worked with scientists at M.I.T. and Tufts University to ease our germ-fearing minds about this very thing. In their research, they demonstrate that covalent attachment of N-alkylated poly(4-vinylpyridine) (PVP) to glass surfaces can make surfaces permanently lethal to several types of bacteria on contact. |
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| VITAMIN C: THE FINAL WORD? |
| A new Australian study reports that megadoses of vitamin C do not treat the common cold, but the findings are unlikely to end a long-standing controversy. |
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| IIT DEVELOPS TECHNOLOGY THAT MAY HELP DOCTORS IDENTIFY BLOOD PATHOGENS FASTER |
| Students at Illinois Institute of Technology have developed a unique sensing technology that will allow doctors to detect and identify pathogens in the blood much faster than conventional lab tests can. The sensing device, known as an electronic nose, is an array of small sensors that can detect gases given off by microscopic organisms including bacteria that can infect the blood such as e. coli and staphylococcus bacteria. The sensors are linked to a computer that can analyze the gas signature and compare it to signatures from known pathogens. |
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| HOW BACTERIA HARDEN THEIR ‘ARMOR’ |
| Duke biochemists have identified a key chemical reaction by which some important virulent bacteria alter their outer coat to make it antibiotic-resistant. The scientists say that their finding could lead to drugs to block such protective alteration, preventing bacteria from developing resistance. |
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| WHEN ANTIBODIES TURN AGAINST YOU |
| Australian immunologists have found that the Ross River virus uses antibodies, which normally neutralise viral invaders, to its own advantage. |
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| UF SCIENTISTS SAY GLOBAL WARMING COULD SPREAD MOSQUITO |
| Vanishing coastlines may not be the only peril in a global-warming world; disease-carrying Asian tiger mosquitoes may find the hotter temperatures to their liking and may show up in places they've never been seen before, according to new research published this week. |
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| SCARY STUDY: SELENIUM DEFICIENCY CAUSES FLU VIRUS TO MUTATE INTO MORE DANGEROUS FORMS |
| Influenza virus that has been passed through mice deficient in the trace nutrient selenium mutates and emerges from the mice more virulent than before, a new study shows. While the research was limited to rodents, it's likely that something similar happens in humans deficient in selenium and, possibly, in other nutrients, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists say. |
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| ACTIVE (LIVE) VACCINE PROTECTS FROM FUNGOUS DISEASE |
| It's the first tome when scientists have used the DNA recombinant technology to prepare an active (live) vaccine to protect mice from mycoses (fungous infection). This new vaccine is more reliable than modern vaccines manufactured without implementation of the DNA recombinant technology, and more efficient that the so-called "suppressed vaccines" (vaccines whose operational principle is based on introduction of weakened or dead virus in an organism). |
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| EXCESSIVE SPORT EXERCISES RAISE A RISK OF CATCHING INFECTION |
| Whereas normal fitness training strengthens man’s immune system, excessive sport exercises, on the contrary, enfeeble the organism. Exhausting sports may be considered as a stress factor debilitating the immune protection... |
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| NEW IDEAS FOR FIGHTING WITH ENCEPHALITIS |
| Encephalitic danger has already been following us for a long time, poisoning a carefree pleasure of seeing beauties of Siberia and far East's forests. Over the last years encephalitic ticks have even coming up to the forests of the Moscow region. |
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