infectious-disease
18 stories tagged "infectious-disease"
Ghana's 1.7 Million 'Climate' Diarrhea Cases Come From a Model Where Risk Falls in the Hottest Months
Built on a UK-led official-statistics framework, the estimate compares 12 years of Ghanaian weather against a benchmark set by a rule that resolved to the 95th percentile. It does not measure climate change, and each weather exposure accounts for 5.5 percent of cases.
Drugs & FDAGSK's Hepatitis B Drug Got a Label That Reaches Patients It Functionally Cured About One Time in 14
Below 1,000 IU/mL of surface antigen, 26 percent of treated patients reached functional cure. Between 1,000 and 3,000, a range the FDA's label also covers, GSK's own counts work out to about 7 percent, for a weekly injection boxed for serious liver reactions and low platelets.
Infectious DiseaseThe 'Pac-Man' Enzyme That Eats Bioplastic Also Breaks Down Penicillin
Konstanz researchers pulled an enzyme from forest soil that digests an experimental bioplastic and also cuts open penicillin. The press release says every bioplastic completely degraded. The paper's carbon numbers and the intact buried films say otherwise, and nobody put the gene in a living bacteri
Infectious DiseaseA Week of Immunology, a Shared Hotel and a 'Transformative' Claim With No Alumni Count
Nine IUIS educators call their one-week immunology courses in low- and middle-income countries transformative. Their 2022 guidelines say the committee's budget partly funds 3 courses a year, and the program's 2019 self-assessment measured enjoyment and quiz scores, not careers.
Infectious DiseaseThe Gut Lining Was Supposed to Be Plumbing. A 500,000-Cell Atlas Caught It Fighting Each Microbe Differently.
Six microbes, six different reprogrammings of the intestinal lining, including a cell state that appears only during one bacterial infection and concentrates inside the lesions that bug builds.
Infectious DiseaseA Siberian Plague Lab Lost a Scientist, and Moscow Is Asking for the Trust It Burned at Sverdlovsk
Daria Shipilova, 28, studied plague in Irkutsk until a severe pneumonia killed her, and about 200 people were quarantined. The biology says stay calm. The history says make Moscow show its work.
Infectious DiseaseFor 400 Years After the Black Death, Plague Kept Walking Back Into Europe on War Roads
Twenty-six sets of medieval teeth trace Yersinia pestis splitting into three branches around 1500, with the later lineages tracking the roads armies and refugees traveled. The pattern points to repeated re-introductions, plus some strains that may have dug in locally.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.