Infectious Disease
21 stories
David Ho's Lab Built an Antibody to Neutralize Nearly Every Strain of HIV. Its First Test in People With the Virus Held for Two Weeks.
Fifty-four volunteers, nine with HIV, and just three with virus still in their blood. The engineered antibody drove their viral load down as much as ninetyfold, then lost the ground within a week as it drained away.
Infectious DiseaseThe Nose-Spray TB Vaccine in Your Feed This Week Has Only Ever Worked in Mice
Johns Hopkins fused two genes into a nasal spray, added it to a drug cocktail, and cleared tuberculosis faster in mice. DNA vaccines have dazzled mice for thirty years and disappointed humans nearly every time. This one has not been in a person yet.
Infectious DiseaseFive Years After COVID, Japan Is Still Dying at Pandemic Rates, and Confirmed COVID Explains Only a Tenth
Japan's excess deaths peaked at 7.55 percent in 2022 and still ran at 5.76 percent through 2023, after Tokyo downgraded COVID to a routine infectious disease, in one of the most heavily mRNA-dosed countries on earth.
Infectious DiseaseAgainst Omicron, a Second COVID Dose Added Almost Nothing for Kids Who Were Already Infected
In Austria's own registry, one dose protected previously infected people slightly better than two; in children against the omicron they actually faced, the second dose's benefit could not be told apart from zero. The guidance never moved.
Infectious DiseaseThe Same System Now Racing to Test a Bundibugyo Ebola Vaccine Had Nineteen Years to Build One
Bundibugyo Ebola was identified in 2007. By the time this year's outbreak passed 1,200 cases there was still no licensed vaccine and none in clinical development. Now roughly $75 million is moving to test three experimental shots on the people dying from it.
Infectious DiseaseThe Gut Lining Starves Salmonella of Iron, a Trick We Thought Only Immune Cells Knew
Salmonella sickens more than a million Americans a year. University of Vermont researchers found the cells it invades fight back by withholding the iron and manganese the bacteria need, a defense the textbooks credited mainly to immune cells.
Infectious DiseaseMost of These Ebola Patients Aren't Bleeding. That's Why It's Spreading.
A Bundibugyo virus outbreak in DRC and Uganda has topped 1,100 confirmed cases, yet roughly nine in ten patients show no bleeding, the symptom everyone is trained to look for.
Infectious DiseaseMost People's Bodies Quietly Beat TB. The Ones Who Lose Are Drowning Their Own T Cells.
A new single-cell study of the airways of TB-exposed people finds that progression to disease tracks with a neutrophil flood that smothers protective T cells, with type I interferon as the switch.
Infectious DiseaseA Blocked Vaccine Study, and the Statistical Method Its Own Lead Author Warned About
A CDC vaccine-effectiveness study pulled from the agency's own journal landed in JAMA, and the press called it censorship. The method it used has a documented blind spot its own lead author once published on.
Infectious DiseaseThe Bird Flu Was Hiding in the Udder. The Receptor Map Showed Up Two Years Late.
A new University of Pittsburgh study explains why H5N1 infects cow udders instead of lungs. The receptor evidence pointed there in 2024; the federal response did not move as fast.
Infectious DiseaseThe Ebola Vaccine We Celebrated Doesn't Touch the Strain Now Burning Through Congo
Congo's Ebola outbreak has passed 1,000 cases and is rising faster than any before it, but it is caused by Bundibugyo virus, against which the licensed Ebola vaccine and antibody drugs were never designed to work.
Infectious DiseaseIt Grows Like a Cancer, Not a Parasite. And It's in 37% of Seattle's Coyotes.
A European strain of Echinococcus multilocularis has been found in 37 percent of Puget Sound coyotes, the first wild-host detection on the U.S. West Coast outside Alaska.
Infectious DiseaseDecades of Failed Diarrhea Vaccines Kept Hitting the Wrong Coat. A WashU Team Just Found the Scissors Underneath.
A WashU-led team identified a structurally conserved patch on three mucus-cleaving enzymes that ETEC, Shigella, and other gut pathogens all use to breach the intestinal barrier, offering a single antibody target the field has chased for decades.
Infectious DiseaseThe cheaper staph antibiotic just won the biggest trial ever run
The largest randomized trial ever run for staph bloodstream infection finds the cheap generic antibiotic cefazolin works as well as the older standard, with less kidney damage and no pharma money behind the answer.
Infectious DiseaseAmerican Infant Mortality Just Hit a Record Low. The International Comparison Is Half an Accounting Trick. The Mississippi Gap Is Not.
Preliminary CDC data put the 2025 U.S. infant mortality rate at 5.4 per 1,000 live births, a record low. The international comparison the headlines lean on is partly an artifact of how countries count. The domestic gap is not.
Infectious DiseaseThe textbook said B cells take turns. A new temporal map of a malaria infection says they don't.
A new Nature Immunology temporal map of B cell responses to malaria in mice catches class-switching, clonal expansion, and somatic hypermutation overlapping from the first week, scrambling the tidy stepwise story textbooks still teach.
Infectious DiseaseThe Battlefield Medicine Revolution Was Built on Fake Wounds
A British prosthetics graduate is heading to NHS ambulance crews and the British military to build realistic trauma wounds, the artisan end of the twenty-year battlefield-medicine revolution that turned hemorrhage into a survivable injury.
Infectious DiseaseThe AI Vaccine That 'Passed' Its First Trial Three Years Ago
Cambridge finished the Phase 1 trial in 2023. The press tour arrived in 2026. The paper, when you read it, said the immunogenicity was modest.
Infectious DiseaseA 16-month-old died at an Arkansas splash pad. Its chlorinator had been broken for a month.
A new global synthesis on free-living amoebae explains why a single bad month at a public splash pad is enough to kill a child, and why the CDC's existing protocol would have caught it.
Infectious DiseaseXocova clears the FDA. What it actually prevents is the smaller story.
The FDA approved Shionogi's ensitrelvir for post-exposure COVID prevention, citing a 67% relative risk reduction. Look at what the trial actually measured and a different story comes into focus.
Infectious DiseaseAmerica's Ebola Fortress: History Has Tested This Strategy, and It Failed
Washington has built a wall around the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa. The last time America tried this, the evidence says the wall leaked, and so did the response.