News & Perspective

Apr 14, 2010

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese researchers who have been investigating puzzling outbreaks of a febrile illness in rural areas that they thought might be anaplasmosis reported today that they identified a new bunyavirus, one that may be transmitted by ticks.

(CIDRAP News) – The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has launched a clinical trial of a dengue virus vaccine, a product that eventually may help prevent a disease to which 2.5 billion people are exposed.

The launching of a trial at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public in Baltimore and the University of Vermont in Burlington follows more than a decade of development, the NIAID said in a press release.

(CIDRAP News) – The United States could be the next country to experience an epidemic of dengue illnesses if the disease keeps aggressively expanding, senior officials from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) warned this week.

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW-Madison) worked on Ebola virus genetic material in a lab that lacked the required security measures, and federal agencies responsible for monitoring compliance didn't notice the problem, a watchdog group that monitors biodefense research safety reported recently.

(CIDRAP News) – An experimental vaccine protected monkeys from the deadly Marburg hemorrhagic fever virus even though they weren't vaccinated until after exposure, according to a report published in the April 29 issue of The Lancet.

(CIDRAP News) – A pair of vaccines created by a Canadian-based international team of researchers protected monkeys against the lethal Ebola and Marburg viruses, according to a new report in Nature Medicine.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials yesterday released a 37-page report that they say demonstrates "tremendous progress" in developing countermeasures for bioterrorism through federally funded research since early 2002.