Cold, Flu & Cough News and Research

Latest Cold, Flu & Cough News and Research

Novavax announces positive results in trial of seasonal influenza VLP (trivalent) vaccine candidate

Novavax, Inc. has announced favorable results from a Phase IIa human clinical trial of its seasonal influenza VLP (trivalent) vaccine candidate.

12 Dec 2008

Gene therapy used to treat periodontal disease

Scientists at the University of Michigan have shown that gene therapy can be used to successfully stop the development of periodontal disease, the leading cause of tooth loss in adults.

12 Dec 2008

Vaxfectin-formulated H5N1 pandemic influenza achieves T-cell responses and cross-clade reactivity in humans

Vical Incorporated has announced that the company's Vaxfectin-formulated H5N1 pandemic influenza DNA vaccines induced T-cell responses against a matching strain of influenza virus and demonstrated cross-clade antibody responses against a different strain in a Phase 1 clinical trial.

11 Dec 2008

RNA interference can facilitate vaccine development

Pharmaceutical companies and universities are racing to develop drugs that use the gene silencing mechanism known as RNA interference to treat a host of diseases.

10 Dec 2008

Magnets in toys pose serious health risks

While the danger of magnets for children is increasingly recognized, they don't receive treatment for swallowing them as quickly as needed, and parents don't receive sufficient warning on toys, according to a new study.

10 Dec 2008

Hot drinks help fight cold and flu

A hot drink may help reduce the symptoms of common colds and flu, according to new research by Cardiff University's Common Cold Centre.

10 Dec 2008

Researchers map changing epigenetic modifications that enable transposons to run amok

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Much like cancer cells, plant cells grown for a long time outside of their normal milieu, in culture dishes, have highly unstable genomes.

10 Dec 2008

Hong Kong on high alert over bird flu outbreak

Concerns that an outbreak of what is suspected to be the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in a wholesale market in Hong Kong, has prompted the culling of tens of thousands of chickens.

10 Dec 2008

UK kidney cancer patients face toxic, out-dated treatments with little hope of change

Leading oncologist Professor Tim Eisen has expressed concerns that patients with advanced kidney cancer could be condemned to toxic, barely effective, 20 year-old treatments because the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is likely to rule out using all four of the new treatments it has assessed.

10 Dec 2008

Merck Serono's Kuvan receives European marketing authorization

Merck Serono, a division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, today announced that the European Commission has granted marketing authorization for Kuvan(R) for the treatment of hyperphenylalaninemia (HPA) in phenylketonuria (PKU) or BH4 deficient patients.

10 Dec 2008

Dacogen data presented on trial in seniors with acute myeloid leukemia

Eisai Corporation of North America has announced data from a Phase II trial evaluating a five-day dosing regimen of Dacogen(R) (decitabine for injection) in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the most common form of leukemia.

10 Dec 2008

Vaccine against malaria could be ready in 5 years

Malaria kills more than one million people every year so the news that an effective vaccine could be available within five years is more than welcome.

9 Dec 2008

Stress relief: Lab mice that exercise control may be more normal

Purdue University scientists found that mice raised in cages may relieve stress with behaviors associated with mice in the wild.

8 Dec 2008

Lenalidomide safe for elderly patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia

The oral medication lenalidomide is safe and well-tolerated for elderly patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a group without a well-defined frontline therapy for their disease, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reported today at the 50th annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

8 Dec 2008

Low-income settings require local guideline development for childhood illness

The next generation of case management guidelines for childhood illness need to be more locally informed, rather than relying on those centrally generated by organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), argues a new essay published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.

8 Dec 2008

Potential new therapy for hepatitis C treatment

Combination therapies similar to those used for HIV patients may be the best way of treating hepatitis C virus (HCV), say researchers from the University of Leeds.

8 Dec 2008

Half-dose vaccination in healthy young individuals may be effective in times of vaccine shortage

Individuals younger than 50 who have been previously vaccinated do not appear to have a substantially different immune response to a half-dose of influenza vaccine than to a full dose, according to a report in the December 8/22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

8 Dec 2008

MedImmune starts phase 2 trial of antibody targeting IL-5 receptor

MedImmune has announced that it has initiated a Phase 2 clinical trial in patients with chronic asthma to determine the safety of subcutaneous dosing of a humanized monoclonal antibody (MAb) that targets the interleukin-5 receptor (IL-5R).

8 Dec 2008

Scientists pinpoint immune-system targets in complex pathogens

Our immune cells have an amazingly intricate recognition system to detect invading pathogens. Often, the intricacies have overwhelmed scientists who want to know exactly what gives an alarm signal to T cells, a class of white blood cells that recognizes invaders.

7 Dec 2008

Interferon as long-term treatment for hepatitis C not effective

Use of the drug interferon as a long-term maintenance strategy to slow the progression of liver disease associated with the hepatitis C virus is ineffective, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers and their colleagues from nine other institutions have found in a multicenter study.

5 Dec 2008