In its ongoing response to safety lapses at two of its high-containment labs, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today announced the members of an external lab safety work group. The 11-person group will advise CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, and the CDC's new director of lab safety, Michael Bell, MD, according to a statement.
In the wake of finding smallpox vials in a storage area earlier this month and a congressional hearing today on federal lab biosecurity (see related story), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the earlier discovery also included more than 300 vials of pathogens such as influenza and dengue viruses, as
Phase 3 clinical trial results for the most advanced dengue vaccine in development, known as CYD-TDV and made by Sanofi Pasteur, showed it is more than 50% protective overall and nearly 90% effective against the most serious, hemorrhagic form of the disease, according to a new study published in The Lancet.
Although some studies have suggested that the quadrivalent (four-strain) human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine may raise the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE), which is a blood clot that lodges in a vein, a Danish study released today in JAMA of more than 500,000 girls and women who received the vaccine did not find an increased VTE incidence.
The number of chikungunya cases imported into the United States rose by 41 in the past week, to 114, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an update yesterday. The number of states reporting imported cases climbed from 22 to 27, plus the US Virgin Islands.
An outbreak of an unknown febrile illness that initially prompted suspicion for hemorrhagic fever or Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) has been diagnosed as dengue fever, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday in a statement.
Dengue cases increased fivefold from 2003 to 2013, but the death rate dropped a bit recently.
The World Health Assembly (WHA) again did not decide on when the last laboratory stocks of variola virus, the pathogen that causes smallpox, should be destroyed, Nature reported today on its news blog.
Five more cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Guinea as of May 12 have been reported by that country's ministry of health, bringing the cumulative number of clinical cases in the outbreak to 248, according to an update yesterday from the World Health Organization (WHO). The number of deaths remains at 171, unchanged from the agency's May 8 update.
China reported two more H7N9 influenza infections today, along with two deaths in patients whose illnesses were announced earlier.
