• Drug-resistant MRSA in livestock now infects humans

    A novel form of MRSA, a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus called ST398, can now be found in pigs, turkeys, cattle, and other livestock and has been detected in 47 percent of meat samples in the United States; the figures illustrate a very close link between antibiotic use on the farm and potentially lethal human infections

  • Georgia Tech’s software for rapid analysis of food-borne pathogens

    A team of Goergia Tech bioinformatics graduate students, led by a biology professor, worked in close collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to create an integrated suite of computational tools for the analysis of microbial genome sequences

  • Scientists offer new information for fighting flu

    Influenza is the world’s leading cause of morbidity and mortality; seasonal viruses affect up to 15 percent of the human population and cause severe illness in five million people a year; in the United States, financial losses caused by seasonal influenza are estimated to exceed $87 billion annually

  • How new viruses evolve and become deadly

    Scientists demonstrate how a new virus evolves, which sheds light on how easy it can be for diseases to gain dangerous mutations; this demonstration follows recent news that scientists in the United States and the Netherlands produced a deadly version of bird flu

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  • Scientists urge accelerated flu research

    The discovery by scientists that H5N1 virus could potentially be transmitted between mammals has led to fears both of misuse and of accidental release – and to requests of two leading science publication to edit and redact portions of two articles in which the findings of the research are reported; a leading specialist argues that H5N1 viruses circulating in nature may already pose a threat because influenza viruses constantly mutate and can cause pandemics

  • U.S. drug shortages a threat to public health, patient care

    Shortages in the United States of key drugs used to fight infections represent a public health emergency and can put patients at risk; frequent anti-infective shortages can substantially alter clinical care and may lead to worse outcomes for patients

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  • La Nina weather pattern may lead to flu pandemics?

    Pandemics of influenza around the world caused widespread death and illness in 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009; a new study examining weather patterns around the time of these pandemics found that each of them was preceded by La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific

  • Thai health officials prevent outbreaks in historic floods

    Thanks to Thailand’s aggressive public health and emergency response operations, the country managed successfully to prevent disease outbreaks following record floods

  • Satellites helping to track disease outbreaks

    Using satellite images of city lights at night, Princeton researchers have developed a new method to track infectious disease outbreaks

  • High-tech cleanser kills superbugs dead

    According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antibiotic-resistant bacteria are one of the top three threats to human health; patients in hospitals are especially at risk, with almost 100,000 deaths due to infection every year in the United States alone; engineers develop an easy-to-use solution to make hospitals safer

  • New plan to fight cholera in Haiti meets resistance

    Haiti’s latest attempt to stamp out the cholera epidemic that has ravaged its population is meeting sharp criticism from public health authorities; Haiti’s two most prominent health care organizations plan to deploy hundreds of workers to the country’s remote villages and the impoverished alleys of the capital to administer vaccines

  • Flu shots not effective enough in global outbreak, report finds

    A new study reveals that seasonal flu shots are not effective enough to protect people in the event of a pandemic; “Today’s flu shot is like an iPhone 1.0,” said the study’s author, Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance at the University of Minnesota; “What we need is an iPhone 10.0”

  • "Vampire" bacteria may serve as living antibiotic

    A vampire-like bacteria that leeches onto specific other bacteria — including certain human pathogens — has the potential to serve as a living antibiotic for a range of infectious diseases, a new study indicates

  • Source of St. Louis E.coli outbreak still uncertain

    Public health officials in Missouri are scrambling to locate the source of an E.coli outbreak that has infected twenty-six people in one week; health authorities believe that Schnucks, a chain of salad bars, may be the culprit, but so far tests for the bacteria have all come back negative

  • New virus could be the first filovirus to cause disease in bats

    A team of international researchers has discovered a new Ebola-like virus — Lloviu virus — in bats from northern Spain; filoviruses, which include well-known viruses like Ebola and Marburg, are among the deadliest pathogens in humans and non-human primates, and are generally found in East Africa and the Philippines