A father-son research team working from separate laboratory benches across the country has discovered a new use for lasers – zapping viruses out of blood. The technique, which holds promise for disinfecting blood for transfusions, uses a low-power laser beam with a pulse lasting just fractions of a second.
Despite recommendations for annual preventive exams for adolescents, only 10 percent of teens have enough visits within 12 months to receive the recommended three shots needed for HPV vaccine. Ideally the three shots are delivered within six months, and only 1 percent of teens see their physicians that often.
As the final weeks of summer arrive, the Rhode Island Department of Health and the Regional Center for Poison Control and Prevention, Serving Massachusetts and Rhode Island, remind people that most poisonings can be prevented.
The North Dakota Department of Health announced the state?s second West Nile virus-related death in 2007, according to Senior Epidemiologist and West Nile Virus program manager Tracy Miller.
University of Utah biochemist Wesley I. Sundquist, Ph.D., has been awarded a five-year, $19.2 million National Institutes of Health grant to establish an HIV research center to study the structural biology of the AIDS-causing virus.
A promising new HIV vaccine created at The Wistar Institute has received funding for clinical development aimed at moving the vaccine into human clinical trials as soon as possible.
Physicians might want to be extra careful about how they treat HIV-infected patients –not just in the clinical sense but in the way they behave toward them. Even the perception that physicians are stigmatizing patients for carrying the virus that causes AIDS can discourage these individuals from seeking proper medical care, according to a new UCLA study.
Researchers may be able to tinker with a single amino acid of an enzyme that helps viruses multiply to render them harmless, according to molecular biologists who say the discovery could pave the way for a fast and cheap method of making vaccines.
Gamma globulin, a type of antibody isolated from blood samples that used to be routinely given to health care workers and international travelers to protect them from infectious diseases, is a highly effective treatment for pinkeye with little apparent toxicity, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
More than 3% of world population is infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). The outcome of HCV infections is either self recovery or chronic hepatitis, and many of the chronic infections will develop into liver cirrhosis or liver cancer.