Disease/Infection News

RSS

Why an effective vaccine for HIV has proven so elusive

Some 25 years after the AIDS epidemic spawned a worldwide search for an effective vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), progress in the field seems to have effectively become stalled.

22 Apr 2009

New Dengue virus discovery could lead to development of anti-dengue drugs

Doctors have no specific drugs to treat dengue fever, a viral illness spread by mosquitoes that sickens 50 million to 100 million people worldwide each year. Instead, the only treatments they can recommend for this painful and sometimes fatal illness (20,000 deaths globally each year) are fluids, rest and non-aspirin pain and fever reducers.

22 Apr 2009

Improved medical ultrasounds

A key part of a medical ultrasound scanner is the transducer probe used to convert sound waves to electrical signals and vice versa.

22 Apr 2009

New insights into how to combat avian flu

An in-depth analysis of blood from patients recovering from the H5N1 avian influenza virus has provided important insights into how to combat the potentially lethal virus.

22 Apr 2009

Early treatment for hepatitis C offers a good chance of a cure

Australian researchers say as many as 70% of hepatitis C carriers can possibly be cured of the disease with early treatment - this is excellent news as hepatitis C, if left untreated can lead to serious liver disease.

22 Apr 2009

Humanized mouse infected with HIV vaginally and rectally allows testing

The "humanized mouse" developed by Dr. J. Victor Garcia-Martinez has allowed the University of Texas Southwestern physician-scientist to conduct HIV/AIDS studies that would have been impossible without such a small animal model of HIV infection.

20 Apr 2009

An African child dies every 30 seconds from Malaria

An African child dies every 30 seconds from this same disease; nearly a half billion people become ill because of it. About 1 million children under the age of 5 die each year from malaria -- a disease that is entirely preventable.

16 Apr 2009

South Australian hospital battles to contain superbug VRE

The cancer ward at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) in South Australia is currently battling to cope with an antibiotic-resistant bacteria called Vanocomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE), a form of bacteria which lives in the gut.

16 Apr 2009

NIH grants will strengthen fight against HIV/AIDS-tuberculosis

The Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health today announced it will award $11.75 million over five years in grants to institutions to strengthen the fight against HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in Haiti, Uganda and China and establish a new program in Tanzania.

16 Apr 2009

New updated clinical guidelines for HIV-associated opportunistic infections

The first complete update in five years of the U.S. guidelines for preventing and treating HIV-associated opportunistic infections has been released by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in cooperation with the HIV Medicine Association of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

16 Apr 2009

Tijuana injection drug users on collision course for HIV and tuberculosis

A study by researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, in collaboration with Mexican researchers and health officials, shows that as many as 67 percent of injection drug users in Tijuana test positive for tuberculosis (TB) infection.

15 Apr 2009

Prenatal exposure to influenza virus shown to reduce intelligence in adulthood

The Hong Kong flu pandemic was responsible for more than 700,000 deaths worldwide in the late 1960s, with major disease outbreaks in Europe in the winter of 1969-1970.

15 Apr 2009

Federal funding for partnership to combat infectious diseases

Oregon Health & Science University and the University of Washington, along with a number of partner institutions across the Northwest, have received federal funding to form a regional research center aimed at combating emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases that pose a serious threat to human health.

15 Apr 2009

Major breakthrough in understanding of Hendra virus

Groundbreaking CSIRO research into how the deadly Hendra virus spreads promises to save the lives of both horses and humans in the future.

15 Apr 2009

Discovery of a new target for novel HIV treatment strategy

The AIDS-causing HIV specifically counteracts the mechanisms of human cells that protect these against viral infections - a special viral protein marks protective cellular proteins for their rapid destruction and thus diminishes the cell's supply.

15 Apr 2009

Early HIV treatment decreases the risk of death

Begin treatment as early as possible: this general common sense rule seems to apply to most diseases except HIV-AIDS, which is only treated once a certain number of immune cells called "CD4+" cells have disappeared.

14 Apr 2009

New AIDS research training grants awarded for projects in 15 countries

The Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health has awarded seven grants totaling almost $2.7 million to train HIV/AIDS researchers in 15 low- and middle-income countries.

14 Apr 2009

Mutations that help HIV hide undermine the virus's ability to replicate

When HIV infects a cell, a complex of human immune proteins called HLA (short for human leukocyte antigen) alert killer T cells by displaying bits of the virus on the surface of the cell. The T cells recognize these HIV fragments and mobilize an attack.

13 Apr 2009

Dengue in Queensland on the decline at last - or is it?

During the current Dengue epidemic in the tropical north of Queensland, health authorities found more than 50,000 potential mosquito breeding sites in Cairns alone.

13 Apr 2009

Largest disease network database ever built

A team of researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard University has created a map summarizing disease associations expressed in a population of more than 30 million people.

12 Apr 2009