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(CIDRAP News) – Influenza viruses in 18% of a group of Japanese children who were treated with oseltamivir (Tamiflu) developed resistance to the antiviral drug, which is viewed as one of the key defenses against pandemic influenza, according to a new report in The Lancet.

(CIDRAP News) – Close to half of the nation's influenza vaccine doses will be shipped later than expected this fall, but everyone who wants a flu shot should ultimately be able to get it, federal health officials said today.

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese agricultural officials, seeking to allay concerns about recent reports that some pigs in China carried the H5N1 avian influenza virus, said yesterday that no pigs are currently infected.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials today released a lengthy plan for dealing with the potentially overwhelming threat of an influenza pandemic like those that occurred three times in the last century.

(CIDRAP News) – Four cases of infection with Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Colorado have led an Illinois company to recall about 406,000 pounds of ground beef and beef steaks, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese health officials confirmed yesterday that H5N1 avian influenza had been found in pigs there in 2003 but says no such findings have occurred in 2004. They also stated that the occurrence had been made public earlier in the year, although the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says there has been no official report of the disease in pigs.

(CIDRAP News) – A distinctive group of symptoms—shortness of breath, impaired gag reflex, and absence of diarrhea—may be predictive of severe outcomes, including death, from foodborne botulism, a group of researchers reported recently.

(CIDRAP News) – A step in the progression of avian influenza considered almost inevitable by experts in view of the widespread and continuing Asian outbreaks this year—its occurrence in pigs—has been taken, if a Chinese scientist's report is confirmed. Chen Hualan, director of China's National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory, said at a conference today in Beijing that H5N1 avian flu had been found in pigs on several farms in the country this year and last.

(CIDRAP News) – H5N1 avian influenza has today been confirmed in a privately owned flock of chickens in northern Malaysia near the Thai border. The country joins three others, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia, in which the disease has resurfaced in recent weeks following the widespread outbreaks across Asia earlier in the year.

(CIDRAP News) – The cases of three people who died recently in Vietnam have now been confirmed by that country as being caused by the H5N1 strain, and two other patients are suspected of having the disease, according to news sources yesterday and today.

(CIDRAP News) – New findings suggest that far more people may be susceptible to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) than was previously supposed, according to a report in the Aug 7 Lancet.

Editor's note: This story was revised Aug 13, 2004, to include additional information from the World Health Organization.

(CIDRAP News) – Three people in Vietnam died recently of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, the Associated Press (AP) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Two studies from Colorado show that the 2003-04 influenza vaccine provided some protection even though it didn't match up well with the predominant flu virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says.

(CIDRAP News) – Twenty-nine states and tribal projects will receive $11.64 million in federal grants to develop livestock identification and tracking systems, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman has announced.

(CIDRAP News) – A medical mystery is baffling infectious disease experts on Martha's Vineyard.

The island off Cape Cod, Mass., has had a string of mysterious tularemia cases. For the fifth summer in a row, people are falling ill with the rare pneumonic form of tularemia, one of the six diseases considered most likely to be spread by terrorists.

(CIDRAP News) – The general trend for Salmonella in meat and poultry samples tested by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) continues to head downward, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced on Aug 5.

(CIDRAP News) – The recent Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Sudan has ended after 17 cases with seven deaths, signaling a remarkably successful containment effort, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said last week it would no longer announce an inconclusive result in testing cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) after just one test, as it did twice in June.

(CIDRAP News) – South Africa has stopped all poultry exports and plans to slaughter 6,000 ostriches on two farms because of an avian influenza outbreak, but the flu is a different strain from the one that has plagued Southeast Asia this year, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – An analyis of decades-old serum samples from pregnant women suggests that a mother's influenza illness early in pregnancy may increase the risk of schizophrenia for her child years later.