CIDRAP newsletters options
Boston University's National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories (NEIDL) received final approval from the Boston Public Health Commission to conduct biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) research, clearing the final hurdle to begin work on some of the world's most lethal pathogens, such as Ebola and Marburg virus, BU Today, the campus newspaper, reported.
A new meta-analysis of 14 studies shows that vaccine effectiveness (VE) against influenza A H3N2 drops 33% within 6 months of immunization, while VE against influenza B declines by 19%. A small VE decline against influenza A H1N1 was not statistically significant.
Trials of both an inactivated and a DNA vaccine showed good safety and immune response data.
Discharge from municipal, agricultural, and industrial waste can contribute.
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) reported a new case of MERS-CoV in Sakaka, a city in the northwestern corner of the country.
A 64-year-old Saudi man is in stable condition after presenting with symptoms of MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) infection. His source of infection is listed as "primary," meaning it's unlikely he contracted the virus from another person.
For the first time since 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) updated its pandemic influenza guidance, emphasizing the need for better tracking during the human-to-human transmission phase. The new guidance was published yesterday.
The WHO defined and named phases of an influenza pandemic. In the alert phase, when human-to-human transmission begins, the agency said there is no need for case-counting.
A meta-analysis finds 4 key differences between low-income and high-income nations involving children, pregnant women, and those with certain underlying medical conditions.
China has detected two new human avian influenza cases, one involving an adult sickened by H7N9 and the other a young child infected with H9N2, according to government reports in the region.
In the past month the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has reported 1,106 new chikungunya infections, bringing the yearly total to 184,636 confirmed, suspected, and imported cases.
A leading dengue vaccine researcher says the move is not surprising, while Sanofi says antibody-dependent enhancement cannot be the whole story surrounding vaccine performance.
New viruses had all the building blocks of the human virus, and lab exeriments found that some are equipped with the same capacity to enter human cells.
Flulike illness is high in 3 southern states, flu is widespread in 4 states, and one marker has topped the national baseline.
The world rarely receives advance notice of a significant public health threat, but the detection of the highly pathogenic form of H7N9 avian influenza in China serves as a second warning, an expert from the World Health Organization's collaborating center in Australia said today in a Cell Research commentary.
An international team of researchers has found that a re-engineered rapid molecular test for detection of tuberculosis (TB) is more sensitive than the current test but less specific, according to a study yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Our weekly wrap-up of antimicrobial stewardship & antimicrobial resistance scans
Mandating the vaccine is not supported by solid evidence, some experts say.
Resistance in Salmonella may have begun before the antibiotic was ever used in people.
Recent reports of mutations introduced by egg-based flu vaccine production arriving on the heels of a tough flu season in Australia raise worries about a similarly difficult season ahead for the United States, experts said in a New England Journal of Medicine commentary yesterday.
In the largest-ever genetic study of mosquitoes, researchers tracked the movement of insecticide resistance between different African regions and identified several rapidly evolving resistance genes that could be used to develop new tools for tracking resistance, monitoring insecticide use, and developing new control methods. The team from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute reporting its findings yesterday in Nature.
An estimated 5 million more cases were reported in 2016 than the year before.
