• Improving malaria control and vaccine development

    Each year more than 250 million people worldwide contract malaria, and up to one million people die; malaria is particularly dangerous for children under five and pregnant women; Plasmodium falciparum is the most lethal of the four Plasmodium species, and is responsible for most clinical disease

  • New approach to attacking flu virus

    Researchers demonstrate ways to use manufactured genes as antivirals, which disable key functions of the flu virus; the proteins have proven effective in attacking many pandemic influenza viruses, including several H1N1 (Spanish flu, Swine flu) and H5N1 (Avian flu) subtypes

  • Less costly anti-malarial drug

    Malaria sickens 300-500 million people, and kills more than one million, annually; scientists are reporting development of a new, higher-yield, two-step, less costly process that may ease supply problems and zigzagging prices for the raw material essential for making the mainstay drug for malaria

  • The way one MARSA strain becomes resistant to antibiotic

    Researchers have uncovered what makes one particular strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) so proficient at picking up resistance genes, such as the one that makes it resistant to vancomycin, the last line of defense for hospital-acquired infections

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  • Pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccination may lead to pan-influenza vaccine

    The pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccine can generate antibodies in vaccinated individuals not only against the H1N1 virus, but also against other influenza virus strains including H5N1 and H3N2; the discovery brings closer the day of a pan-influenza vaccine

  • MRSA superbug spreads from big city hospitals to regional health centers

    MRSA — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — first started to appear around fifty years ago following the introduction of antibiotics, to which the bacteria has become increasingly resistant; scientists now find how the superbug spreads among different hospitals

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  • Compound that halts growth of malaria parasite created

    Malaria sickens more than 200 million people and kills more than a million people annually; the disease is caused by fives species of parasites of the genus Plasmodium, which is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes

  • Rapid, low-cost, point-of-care flu detection demonstrated

    The novel H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009 underscored weaknesses in methods widely used to diagnose the flu, from frequent false negatives to long wait times for results; scientists demonstrate a prototype rapid, low-cost, accurate, point-of-care device that promises a better standard of care

  • Two RNA-based therapeutic candidates for Ebola, Marburg viruses

    Under a contract for up to $291 million from the U.S. Department of Defense, AVI BioPharma has initiated clinical studies for two RNA-based drugs for the treatment of Ebola and Marburg viruses

  • Rethinking the toilet model in developing countries

    More than 2.6 billion people around the world lack access to basic sanitation, and more than 40 percent of the world’s population lack access to even the simplest latrine; the lack of sanitation creates serious problems, including environmental pollution, unsafe surroundings, and increasing the outbreak of lethal epidemic diseases such as cholera; Swedish company offers a solution

  • The bioterrorism threat and laboratory security

    Leonard A. Cole, an expert on bioterrorism and on terror medicine who teaches at Rutgers University, investigates the security of U.S. high containment labs in light of the dramatic growth in the number of these labs, which handle dangerous pathogens, following 9/11 and the anthrax attacks

  • Origami-inspired paper sensor tests for malaria, HIV for less than 10 cents

    Chemists have developed a 3-D paper sensor that may be able to test for diseases such as malaria and HIV for less than ten cents a pop; such low-cost, point-of-care sensors could be useful in the developing world, where the resources often do not exist to pay for lab-based tests, and where, even if the money is available, the infrastructure often does not exist to transport biological samples to the lab

  • Balancing safety, risk in the debate over the new H5N1 viruses

    This fall, the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) set off a debate when it asked the authors of two recent H5N1 research studies and the scientific journals that planned to publish them to withhold important details of the research in the interest of biosecurity; the scientific community is divided over the issue of best to balance free research and security

  • Public health expert: budget cuts will erode response capabilities

    Homeland Security NewsWire’s executive editor Eugene K. Chow recently got the opportunity to speak with Dr. John R. Finnegan, the dean of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health; in their interview, Dr. Finnegan discusses the devastating effects of proposed budget cuts on the U.S. public health system, why it was a wise decision to censor the release of H5N1 flu research; and the creation of a medical reserve corps at universities

  • Universal vaccines would allow wide-scale flu prevention

    An emerging class of long-lasting flu vaccines could do more than just save people the trouble of an annual flu shot; a flu pandemic is difficult to predict and typically impossible to control through vaccination alone; universal vaccines, however, act on virus targets that are relatively constant across all types of flu, even pandemic flu