Animal health officials in Ghana and Ivory Coast yesterday reported more highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu outbreaks in poultry, signaling a continuation of virus activity that reemerged late last year in Africa.
A trial to see if a lower dose of one of the leading Ebola vaccine candidates can reduce reactions such as arthritis and skin rashes found that the effects persisted and that decreasing the dose had a negative impact on immune response. An international research team based in Switzerland published their findings on the lower VSV-EBOV dose yesterday in an early online edition of Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The number of disease outbreaks linked to the drinking of unpasteurized milk has risen at an alarming rate, quadrupling from the period 1993-2006 to 2007-12, as more states allow the legal sale of raw milk, according to a study today in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Another case of MERS-CoV has been reported today by Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH), bringing the total cases there since June 2012 to 805, with 17 of those currently active.
Although early reports during the 2010-11 flu season suggested possible safety concerns over febrile seizures in kids with the trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) Fluzone, just-released epidemiologic findings show no statistically significant association, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Newly installed used cleaning equipment likely played a significant role in the 2011 outbreak of listeriosis linked to Colorado cantaloupe that sickened 147 (see CDC map below) and killed 33, according to a report in today's New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Majorities of respondents in 22 of 24 nations are concerned that cases of Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) might be detected in their country soon, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 15 developed countries and 9 developing nations released today, Ipsos said in a news release.
