Infectious Disease
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The Neuroscientist Who Mapped Fear in the Brain Says a Face Can't Reliably Reveal It
People scowl only about a third of the time they are angry. A multibillion-dollar industry sells software that assumes the other two-thirds are legible.
Infectious DiseaseFor Thirty Years, Doctors Here Were Taught North Carolina Had No Lyme. The Ticks Disagree.
Nearly 40 percent of the adult blacklegged ticks sampled in one western North Carolina town carried the Lyme bacterium, in a state where doctors were trained for thirty years that the disease barely exists.
Infectious DiseaseYour Antibodies Are Still Fighting the 2020 Virus
For two years the message was that another ancestral booster would keep pace with the virus. The immunology says the opposite can happen: repeated shots against the 2020 strain can lock your antibodies onto a version of SARS-CoV-2 that stopped circulating, and in 2023 the WHO named immune imprinting
Infectious DiseaseWarmer, Saltier, Fed on Sewage: Why a Flesh-Eating Bacterium Is Getting Meaner as It Moves North
Vibrio vulnificus kills roughly one in five people it infects, and its northern edge has climbed about 30 miles a year since 1998. The big paper this week reached instead for grief and eco-anxiety.
Infectious DiseaseThe FDA Put an Emergency Label on a Zoetis Dog Pill for a Screwworm America Erased in 1966 Without a Single Drug
The sterile-fly barrier that kept the flesh-eating screwworm out of America for sixty years gave way, and Washington's answer has been a run of emergency drug authorizations, the newest for a Zoetis dog pill whose maker's own release cites no efficacy data against the parasite.
Infectious DiseaseA Sauna Floods Your Blood With Immune Cells. It's a Flush, Not a Boost.
Fifty-one Finns sat in a 73°C sauna for half an hour, and every white blood cell type poured into their blood. Half an hour later the neutrophils and lymphocytes were back to baseline, and the immune system's chemical alarm had barely rung.
Infectious DiseaseSeven Weeks, 345 People Sick, and Not One Recall Notice With a Lot Code
The FDA said the outbreak jalapeños did not reach grocery stores directly. Two days later the USDA named eighteen grocery products made with them, sold in 23 states. Seven weeks in, not one recall notice carries a lot code.
Infectious DiseaseBritain, France, and Germany Don't Put COVID Shots on the Childhood Schedule. A US Order to Match Them Got Called 'Anti-Science.'
Britain, France, and Germany already keep routine COVID shots off the schedule for healthy children. When a US executive order moved the same way, the AMA, Paul Offit, and the press answered with 'zero data' instead of a debate.
Infectious DiseaseThe Screwworm America Eradicated Is Back, and the FDA's First Move Was an Unapproved Spray
The fly the US drove off the continent in 1966 has crossed the border again, and the FDA's emergency answer is a wound spray that never cleared its own approval process. The method that actually won the war is the sterile fly, and Texas is racing to rebuild the factory it let die.
Infectious DiseaseMexican Jalapeños Sickened 1,400 Americans in 2008. Eighteen Years Later, a Different Farm and the Same Import Gap Did It Again.
Salmonella Javiana in jalapeños from Sinaloa has sickened 345 people across 27 states. It is the second time in eighteen years that imported Mexican peppers have done this, and the FDA still physically inspects only about 1 to 2 percent of the food crossing the border.
Infectious DiseaseThe Licensed Ebola Vaccine Was Never Proven to Stop the Strain Now Killing Congo
Bundibugyo virus has driven the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record, with 1,707 deaths across eastern Congo and nearly 90 percent of cases in Ituri, and the WHO's own experts say the one licensed Ebola vaccine should not be used against it.
Infectious DiseaseScientists Watched the Flu Dissolve Structures Inside the Nucleus, in Every Cell and Every Strain They Tried
Influenza reaches into the nucleus and takes apart droplets that may be part of the cell's own defense. Scientists have now mapped how. The drug targets that map supposedly unlocks are still hypothetical.
Infectious DiseaseIn Tuberculosis, the Cell We Called 'Neutral' Is the One Torching the Lung
In the people whose latent TB roared into active disease, the airways filled with neutrophils, half of them flipping on an interferon alarm, while their T cells were pushed to exhaustion and death.
Infectious DiseaseA Toxicologist Mapped 800 Shared Causes Across 4,000 Diseases. His Protocol Treats Them by Subtraction, Not Prescription.
Ronald Kostoff argues chronic and infectious disease grow from the same toxic soil, a damaged immune system, and that removing the cause has to come before any drug can work.
Infectious DiseaseDavid 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 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 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 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 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.