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(CIDRAP News) – Fresh Express, a California company that produces bagged salads and other produce products, announced this week it would provide up to $2 million for research on how to keep Escherichia coli O157:H7 out of fresh produce.

A scientific advisory panel assembled by the company has chosen five research priorities and will evaluate research proposals and disseminate findings, the company said in a Jan 17 news release.

(CIDRAP News) – Two patients who recently died of H5N1 avian influenza in Egypt had a strain of the virus that was moderately resistant to oseltamivir (Tamiflu), the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today, but the finding has not prompted new health advisories.

(CIDRAP News) – In an effort to stretch the nation's supply of vaccines for a potential influenza pandemic, federal health officials today announced contracts totaling $132.5 million to help three companies develop dose-sparing substances, or adjuvants, to be used with H5N1 flu vaccines.

(CIDRAP News) – A virus recovered from victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic kills by replicating so rapidly that it revs the immune system into overdrive, turning the body against itself, a team of scientists report in today's issue of the journal Nature.

(CIDRAP News) – Avian influenza has flared again in the poultry populations of two Asian countries that had enjoyed prolonged quiet periods—Japan and Thailand—as authorities battled spreading bird outbreaks in Vietnam.

(CIDRAP News) – Reports from Indonesia say officials have confirmed that H5N1 avian influenza infected the 18-year-old son of a woman who died of the infection last week, but the woman's husband escaped the virus.

(CIDRAP News) – Inadequate worker-safety protocols probably contributed to the severity of the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic in Ontario, a provincial commission said in a report unveiled this week.

(CIDRAP News) – A flurry of H5N1 avian influenza activity continued today with reports of another confirmed human case and several suspected cases in Indonesia, along with poultry outbreaks of probable H5N1 in Nigeria and Japan.

(CIDRAP News) – Investigators have tentatively linked the recent Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak associated with Taco John's restaurants in Iowa and Minnesota to dairy farms near lettuce fields in California, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

(CIDRAP News) – The husband and son of an Indonesian woman who was being treated for H5N1 avian influenza were hospitalized with possible cases of the same illness today, and the woman died shortly afterward, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – The anthrax-laced letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle's office in 2001 may have affected more people than was recognized at the time, but the antibiotics and vaccinations given to potentially exposed people were highly effective, according to an immunologic study of the event.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed today that a 37-year-old man from China's Anhui province is recovering from H5N1 avian influenza, the country's first case in nearly 5 months, while hospital officials in Indonesia said one of two avian flu patients there died today.

Fear is like a pie (or money): There's usually not enough to go around. If you want people to take precautions, you have to compete for your share.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a refrigerated form of FluMist, the nasal-spray influenza vaccine, which should be more convenient for providers than the current formulation, MedImmune Inc. announced yesterday.

FluMist, a live attenuated vaccine first approved in 2003, is currently approved for use in healthy children and adults from ages 5 to 49 years.

(CIDRAP News) – Two Indonesians have been hospitalized in less than a week with H5N1 avian influenza infections, the country’s first in more than a month, according to news services.

Indonesia’s health ministry told Bloomberg News yesterday that a 14-year-old boy who tested positive for the H5N1 virus was being treated at Persahabatan Hospital in Jakarta after showing flulike symptoms on Jan 1.

(CIDRAP News) – Hong Kong government officials recently announced that a wild bird found dead near a busy shopping district on Dec 31 tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) yesterday proposed to reopen the US border to older Canadian cattle and beef for the first time since bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) cropped up in Canada in 2003.

(CIDRAP News) – In an effort to expand the pool of antiviral drugs for influenza, the US government yesterday awarded a $102.6 million contract to BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Birmingham, Ala., to develop peramivir, a new neuraminidase inhibitor.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials have announced the launch of the first clinical trial of an H5N1 avian influenza vaccine made from a piece of the virus's DNA rather than from the whole virus, an approach that may facilitate faster vaccine production.