Survivors of the first reported outbreak of Ebola still harbor detectable antibodies to the virus 40 years later, and some of those antibodies can still neutralize live virus, researchers reported today in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Health officials in Hildago County on Dec 7 reported three recent Zika cases, one of which appears to have been transmitted locally by mosquitoes, the Texas Department of State Health Services (TDSHS) said yesterday in a statement.
Boston University's National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories (NEIDL) received final approval from the Boston Public Health Commission to conduct biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) research, clearing the final hurdle to begin work on some of the world's most lethal pathogens, such as Ebola and Marburg virus, BU Today, the campus newspaper, reported.
China has detected two new human avian influenza cases, one involving an adult sickened by H7N9 and the other a young child infected with H9N2, according to government reports in the region.
Analysis of blood samples provides clues about how the disease unfolds and which patients are more likely to die.
Tests on a traditional healer in Kenya who was a contact of one of the lab-confirmed Uganda Marburg patients has tested negative, and other high-risk contacts in Kenya have completed their 21-day monitoring periods, with no other illnesses detected, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.
In experiments designed to discover reasons for the relatively low effectiveness of last season's flu vaccine against the H3N2 strain—despite what experts thought was a close match between the vaccine strain and circulating viruses—researchers found that the culprit was a mutation that arose during production when the virus was passaged in chicken eggs.
South Africa reported four more outbreaks involving highly pathogenic H5N8, two in poultry and two in other captive bird settings, according to two reports today from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
Uganda's recently announced second lab-confirmed Marburg virus patient—part of a family cluster— visited two traditional healers for his symptoms, one of them across the border in western Kenya, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO) said today in its weekly outbreak and health emergencies bulletin.
The man, who died from his infection, is a brother of the first confirmed case-patient.
