Vaccine efficacy was 60.3% for all ages but lower in kids under 9.
A US Army facility in Utah that mistakenly shipped live Bacillus anthracis to dozens of other labs over a 10-year period did not properly test its method for killing the bacterium, which causes anthrax, according to a USA Today story based on a government report.
A new genetic study of Ebola viruses in West Africa's epidemic, published yesterday in Nature, helps trace the disease's spread and, according to the authors, shows that the virus mutated at about the same rate observed in earlier outbreaks.
Two high-ranking members of Congress have asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to assess whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) acted properly in scrapping a multimillion-dollar contract for developing new technology for detecting bioterror agents, the Washington Post reported today.
A potentially promising way to lower the risk of recurrent Clostridium difficile infections is to fight fire with fire, in the form of oral doses of a nontoxigenic strain of C diff, according to a report yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Apr 25 appointed Peter Jan Graaff to lead the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), taking the place of Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed of Mauritania, who had held the position since late December. Ould Cheikh Ahmed succeeded UNMEER's first chief, Anthony Banbury.
Through a review of DNA data from listeriosis cases, federal health officials have identified two more patients who were affected by a Listeria monocytogenes outbreak linked to Blue Bell Creameries products, increasing the case count to 10.
Note: The measles item was corrected on Jan 15, because the female traveler who had measles was mistakenly called the index patient. We apologize for the error.
Two new cases of MERS-CoV were recorded today by the country's Ministry of Health (MOH), the first since Jan 8, bringing the total for this year to 10 for the country and the total since June 2012 to 835.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today approved a meningococcal vaccine for infants in sub-Saharan Africa that has already proved successful in older children and young adults along the continent's "meningitis belt," the agency said in a news release.
Sanofi Pasteur announced yesterday it will seek approval of its dengue virus vaccine in a number of dengue-plagued countries, following completion of a large phase 3 trial that showed overall vaccine efficacy of about 61%.
