A new study suggests that mothers may be able to transfer antiretroviral immunity during gestation and while breastfeeding when receiving a new antibody-based treatment say researchers from France. They report their findings in the October 2006 issue of the Journal of Virology.
All parties with an interest in the upcoming Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property are invited to present their views to web-based public hearings organized by the World Health Organization (WHO).
A research consortium, supported by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced the publication of a high-quality draft genome sequence of the western honey bee, finding that its genome is more similar to humans than any insect sequenced thus far.
Merck & Co., Inc. announced that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted unanimously to recommend that adults 60 years of age and older be vaccinated with ZOSTAVAX? [Zoster Vaccine Live (Oka/Merck)] to help prevent shingles (herpes zoster), a frequently painful disease marked by a blistering rash.
Novartis announced the US regulatory approval of Tyzeka(TM) (telbivudine) as a new once-a-day oral treatment for patients with chronic hepatitis B, a disease estimated to affect about 1.25 million people in the US but more than 350 million globally and considered the tenth leading cause of death.
A team of scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has identified a human protein that helps varicella-zoster virus, the cause of both chickenpox and shingles, spread from cell to cell within the body.
Novartis (NYSE: NVS) announced today results of pivotal Phase III clinical trial data for its innovative cell culture-derived influenza vaccine demonstrating that it is highly capable of producing an immune response (“immunogenic”), one at least as strong as the traditional egg-derived influenza vaccine Aggripal? for each of the three influenza strains studied.
UT Southwestern Medical Center is one of a handful of top research institutions evaluating a promising new medication researchers hope can reduce the severity and frequency of asthma attacks in inner-city children, a population known to have a high prevalence of severe asthma.
Researchers in the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Caribbean Primate Research Center have discovered a key mechanism by which the Filoviruses, Ebola and Marburg, cause disease. The identification of an amino acid sequence in Filoviruses that results in the rapid depression of immunological response is described in the December 2006 issue of The FASEB Journal. Using this information, researchers can begin to develop new drugs to stop these devastating diseases.
Mass vaccination would not be necessary in the event of a large-scale smallpox bioterrorist attack in the United States, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that appears online in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.