In a case study in PLoS Medicine, doctors report on the case of a 35-year-old heroin user who came to the accident and emergency department with double vision, slurred speech, drooping eyelids and eye muscle weakness. The diagnosis turned out to be wound botulism. Wound botulism is a potentially fatal illness that occurs when spores of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum contaminate a wound, germinate and produce botulimum nerve toxin.
It is widely hoped that neural stem cells will eventually be useful for replacing nerves damaged by degenerative diseases like Alzheimer disease and multiple sclerosis. But there may also be another use for such stem cells — delivering anti-cancer drugs to cancer cells.
Two papers in this week’s PLoS Medicine suggest possible new avenues of treatment against malaria.
Severe malnutrition is responsible for the deaths of millions of children every year. Even when such children are admitted to hospital, up to one in five of them will die. Research published in PLoS Medicine has shown that certain clinical signs in severely malnourished children can predict those who are most likely to die. This should help health care workers focus their attentions on those who are most at risk.
A team of researchers who conducted a landmark trial in Orange Farm, South Africa, which concluded that male circumcision can substantially reduce the risk of becoming infected with HIV, have now studied the economic aspects of this approach to preventing HIV/AIDS. Their new research, published in PLoS Medicine, suggests that circumcision could reduce the cost of health care in South Africa (and other sub-Saharan Countries), mainly through savings on the cost of HIV treatment.
The high-resolution crystal structure of trimeric AcrB solved using DARPin inhibitors reveals insights into the drug export mechanism via hemi-channels in each subunit.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) expresses deep concern over the verdict delivered yesterday by a Libyan court sentencing six health care professionals to death for the alleged intentional transmission of HIV, and strongly urges that the verdict be reviewed by the higher courts.
Once people have been diagnosed with lung cancer they might think it pointless to stop smoking, but in fact it’s not too late to benefit from quitting, a new study shows.
New studies on nutrition and HIV from researchers at Tufts University in Boston find that a high percentage of people with HIV have the same two characteristics of metabolic syndrome, and that people with HIV on HAART may be at risk for zinc deficiency.
IRD immuno-virologists and their research partners have determined the mechanisms involved in the occurrence of the vascular leakage triggered by the Dengue virus. Metalloproteinases are responsible for the passage of plasma across the blood-vessel walls. These original results, validated first by in vitro tests then in vivo on a mouse model, open up the first line of attack for treatment against hemorrhagic Dengue and new perspectives for others hemorrhagic fevers, such as Ebola.