The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today updated its recommendations for testing pregnant women for Zika virus, mainly because one of the most frequently used tests—which detected immunoglobulin B (IgM) antibodies—is more likely to yield a false positive result, especially as incidence of the disease in the Americas decreases.
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, yesterday announced the second year of funding to states—totaling $30.9 million—to support the implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today announced a multistate Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak linked to microbiology laboratories that has sickened 24 people in 16 states. The infections have been associated with clinical, commercial, and teaching labs.
Basic molecular typing and routine hospital data can be used in resource-limited settings to do lab surveillance of antimicrobial resistance organizations, according to researchers in Sri Lanka who reported their findings yesterday in BMC Infectious Diseases.
The first case was identified in late April, and over the past 8 weeks, medical workers registered and followed 583 contacts.
A study in children tested for flu over three seasons at a New Orleans hospital found modest but consistent flu vaccine effectiveness, that a switch from the inactivated trivalent to quadrivalent (four-strain) formulation didn't seem to help or hurt effectiveness, and that the inhaled version of the vaccine didn't perform as well, but improved over successive seasons.
Also, a new study estimates that safe burials may have saved 1,400 to 10,400 lives in West Africa's outbreak.
Saudi Arabia today reported three more MERS-CoV illnesses linked to ongoing hospital-related outbreaks in Riyadh, according to a statement from the country's Ministry of Health (MOH).
In a new study on the Ebola vaccine that has already shown effectiveness in an earlier phase 3 trial during West Africa's outbreak, researchers found that antibodies persist at least for a year and that the vaccine was well tolerated.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) confirmed today that there are at least three children with circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 in the Deir-Ez-Zor governorate of Syria. Two children have developed acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), and one child has tested positive for the virus but is currently healthy.
