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(CIDRAP News) – An outbreak of Escherichia coli O111 infections in Oklahoma seems to have run its course after sickening 314 people, putting 72 in hospitals, and killing one, Oklahoma officials announced yesterday.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) said that the last known case-patient fell ill Sep 6 and that it believed the outbreak was over.

(CIDRAP News) – The FBI plans to ask the National Academy of Sciences to review the bureau's investigation that led to its conclusion that government microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins committed the 2001 anthrax attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller III told Congress today.

(CIDRAP News) – The number of people involved in a restaurant-related outbreak of an uncommon strain of Escherichia coli has risen to 291, including 67 who were hospitalized, Oklahoma officials reported recently.

Sixteen of the hospital patients have received kidney dialysis treatment, the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) reported in its latest official update on Sep 12. One person, a 26-year-old man, has died in the outbreak.

(CIDRAP News) – Public health officials in Hong Kong made headlines in March when they closed schools for 2 weeks to put a damper on an influenza epidemic, but a new report says the measure appears to have had little effect.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it has hired 104 people in its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) in the past 5 months as part of a surge that has brought more than 1,300 new employees to the agency.

(CIDRAP News) – Cross-contamination of clinical specimens in two Idaho hospital laboratories that were conducting proficiency tests triggered brief concern about a potential anthrax attack in 2006, underscoring the value of proper lab practices, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – Xoma Ltd., a Berkeley, Calif., pharmaceutical company, recently announced that it received a $65 million multiyear federal contract to fund work on botulinum antitoxins, one of which it hopes to put through safety and efficacy tests starting in 2009.

(CIDRAP News) – A government official in Laos yesterday said the H5N1 avian influenza virus has been detected in ducks in one of the country's provinces, the same day Togo's health ministry announced that avian influenza struck a poultry farm near that country's capital.

(CIDRAP News) – A bipartisan commission of former US government officials , in issuing a report card today on the federal government's progress toward preventing terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction (WMD), gave the nation a C- for its efforts to reduce the threat of bioterrorism.

(CIDRAP News) – A restaurant-related illness outbreak in Oklahoma featuring an uncommon strain of Escherichia coli has expanded to involve at least 231 people, 61 of whom have been hospitalized, Oklahoma health officials announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – Emergent BioSolutions Inc. recently announced that it won a federal contract worth $24.3 million to develop a monoclonal antibody treatment to block the effects of anthrax toxin.

(CIDRAP News) – Members of Congress plan to press the FBI for more information about its investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks at hearings scheduled Sep 16 and 17, amid persistent doubts in some quarters about the bureau's conclusion that the late microbiologist Dr. Bruce Ivins was the culprit.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia's health ministry reported today that two men have died of H5N1 avian influenza over the past 3 months, marking the government's first official announcement of human cases since early June, when it said it would provide periodic updates instead of case-by-case notifications.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesian health minister Siti Fadilah Supari, who is at the center of an international controversy over sharing of H5N1 avian influenza virus samples, recently claimed that developed countries are creating new viruses as a means of building new markets for vaccines, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report.

(CIDRAP News) – At the request of a meat industry group, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considering allowing the low-dose irradiation of beef carcasses to kill pathogenic bacteria on the surface.

(CIDRAP News) – Amid concern about rising resistance to oseltamivir (Tamiflu) in influenza A/H1N1 viruses, a Dutch team this week reported the death of a leukemia patient who was infected with an H1N1 virus that was resistant to the antiviral drug.

(CIDRAP News) – SIGA Technologies Inc. announced this week that it has been awarded a $55 million federal contract to develop a new formulation of its experimental smallpox drug, called ST-246, and carry out related efforts.

The company, based in New York City, said it had previously received a $16.5 million contract to develop the drug, described as "a potent, non-toxic inhibitor of orthopoxviruses."

(CIDRAP News) – Agriculture officials in Idaho announced yesterday that they were investigating an outbreak of low-pathogenic avian influenza at a game farm in the southwestern part of the state after a federal lab confirmed the virus in pheasants.

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers who conducted genetic analyses of hundreds of influenza viruses collected during the 2006-07 flu season found that many different variants circulated in the US at the same time, suggesting that the way each year's epidemic spreads is more complicated than previously suspected.

(CIDRAP News) – GlaxoSmithKline, maker of the antiviral drug zanamivir (Relenza), today launched a program designed to help businesses stockpile the drug as a strategy to protect employees in the event of an influenza pandemic.