Influenza News and Research

Latest Influenza News and Research

Pennsylvania Department of Health to provide free influenza and Tdap vaccines

The Department of Health will offer free influenza and Tetanus, Diphtheria and Pertussis (Tdap) vaccines at the 2012 Pennsylvania Farm Show, Jan. 9-13, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.

7 Jan 2012

Governments must rethink policies surrounding biosecurity, not resort to censorship

Author Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in this Foreign Policy opinion piece that the announcement researchers from the Netherlands and the U.S. have developed a supercontagious variety of bird flu "has highlighted a dilemma: How do you balance the universal mandate for scientific openness against the fear that terrorists or rogue states might follow the researchers' work -- using it as catastrophic cookbooks for global influenza contagion?"

7 Jan 2012

WHO confirms bird flu cases in Egypt, China

The WHO on Thursday "announced the deaths of two men from H5N1 avian influenza, one from Egypt and another from China whose death was reported earlier in the media," CIDRAP News reports. Both men are suspected to have contracted the virus from avian sources, although an investigation into the man from China's exposure to the virus is ongoing, according to news service.

7 Jan 2012

Tetragenetics reports results from G-SOME H5N1 vaccine preclinical study

Tetragenetics Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the development of recombinant vaccines, today reported preclinical study results showing that an investigational nanoparticle-based influenza vaccine protects against a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza strain.

6 Jan 2012

Bird flu updates

The latest bird flu virus that killed a 39-year-old bus driver in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen over the weekend is not yet transmissible between humans, Chinese health authorities said. The man, who lived in Shenzhen just across the border from Hong Kong, died from multi-organ failure on Saturday, a week after being admitted to hospital with a fever brought on by the virus, state media reported.

3 Jan 2012

Tamiflu resistant flu on the rise: Study

According to World Health Organization researchers there is a rise in Australia in the number of seasonal influenza cases resistant to Tamiflu, the most commonly used antiviral drug. The rise in such cases involving the pandemic 2009 A (H1N1) flu strain, also known as swine flu, took place during Australia's most recent winter: May through August of 2011.

2 Jan 2012

CATCH Healthy Habits program will come to Albany in early 2012

Remember riding your bicycle all over town until dark and then coming home to a hot, healthy meal your mom prepared? Lots of adults do, and now many of them are volunteering to help the next generation – and in the process themselves – get and stay healthy through an innovative program called CATCH Healthy Habits.

31 Dec 2011

FDA approves Pfizer's Prevnar 13 pneumococcal conjugate vaccine as a single dose for adults

Pfizer Inc. announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted approval of the Company's pneumococcal conjugate vaccine Prevnar 13 (Pneumococcal 13-valent Conjugate Vaccine [Diphtheria CRM197 Protein]) as a single dose for use in adults.

31 Dec 2011

LANL's top 10 science stories of 2011

Los Alamos National Laboratory's top 10 science stories of 2011 illustrate the broad variety of scientific excellence that's the hallmark of the Laboratory. This year's stories include alternative energy research, world record magnetic fields, disease tracking, the study of Mars, climate change, fuel cells, solar wind, and magnetic reconnection.

26 Dec 2011

Virus with potential for bioterrorism created – Experts worried

Two major scientific journals are debating on whether to publish details of a man-made mutant flu virus that could kill billions, after a US government's science advisory committee advised them to withhold key details.

21 Dec 2011

Research into how flying fox spreads infectious diseases

The flying fox is an adorable doe-eyed bat with a dark side - it is the perfect vector for emerging infectious diseases from Asia. Susan Tsang, a PhD student in ecology and evolutionary biology at The City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center, turned to a revolutionary way to help fund her research into how this species spreads disease.

21 Dec 2011

University of Western Ontario receives FDA approval to begin SAV001 HIV trial

The first and only preventative HIV vaccine based on a genetically modified killed whole virus has received approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to start human clinical trials.

21 Dec 2011

UC Davis professor monitors world's hot spots for signs of emerging diseases

It's not a matter of if a worldwide pandemic will strike but when, say experts like veterinarian and epidemiologist Jonna Mazet, a professor in the Department of Medicine and Epidemiology in the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine. That's why Mazet, who leads an early warning pandemic system called PREDICT, monitors the world's hot spots, or "hot interfaces" for signs of emerging diseases.

21 Dec 2011

Statins linked with reduced risk of death among hospitalized flu patients

The two main ways to prevent and control influenza today are annual immunization and antiviral drugs. A team of investigators has found that statins, cholesterol-lowering drugs, may offer an additional treatment to complement these approaches and reduce mortality among patients hospitalized with influenza.

14 Dec 2011

Mandatory vaccination policy increases healthcare worker flu vaccination rates

A California hospital raised its employee influenza vaccination rate above 90 percent by shifting from a voluntary vaccination program to one mandating all healthcare workers either get vaccinated or wear a mask at work for the entire flu season (December through March).

13 Dec 2011

Research describes advantages of new vaccine adjuvant

New research from the laboratory of Dr. Elizabeth Leadbetter at the Trudeau Institute may lead to a whole new class of vaccines. Dr. Leadbetter's lab has discovered new properties of a potential vaccine adjuvant that suggest it could be useful for enhancing protection against a number of different infections.

13 Dec 2011

New international consortium aims to prepare researchers for next pandemic

"A group of health organizations [on Wednesday] launched a new international consortium to better prepare the clinical research community to respond to the next pandemic or other emerging health threat," CIDRAP News reports (Schnirring, 12/7).

9 Dec 2011

Experimental sublingual vaccine shows promise against influenza infection

Scientists from the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) have discovered that an antigen common to most influenza viruses, and commonly referred to as matrix protein 2 (M2), when administered under the tongue could protect mice against experimental infection caused by various influenza viruses, including the highly pathogenic avian H5 virus and the pandemic H1 ("swine flu") virus.

9 Dec 2011

Paper calls for strong steps to control global crisis of antibiotic-resistant infections

Shahriar Mobashery, a University of Notre Dame researcher, is one of the coauthors of a new paper by a group of the world's leading scientists in academia and industry that calls for strong steps to be taken to control the global crisis of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The group issued a priority list of steps that need to be taken on a global scale to resolve the crisis.

9 Dec 2011

Nighttime-lights imagery can pinpoint disease hotspots

Normally used to spot where people live, satellite images of nighttime lights can help keep tabs on the diseases festering among them, too, according to new research.

9 Dec 2011