On 4_January, 8 new suspected cases of Rift Valley Fever were discovered by MSF teams in the Ijara District in the North-Eastern Province of Kenya. One of the patients died, taking the death toll to at least 67 since the outbreak began on 7_December.
Infectious bronchitis virus causes devastating losses to the poultry industry but scientists are now developing a new way to vaccinate chicks against the disease — one that can be delivered while they are still in their egg. Researchers have used a “reverse genetic” system to produce a new vaccine strain which is safe to deliver to chicks while they are still in the egg, making it more effective than current vaccines.
Widespread use of the antiviral Tamiflu to fight pandemic avian flu in humans could actually lead to the development of what public health officials hope to avoid??drug-resistant strains of the virus in wild birds. British researchers at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxford have released findings in the January 2007 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) that demonstrate how Tamiflu?s persistence in wastewater and river water could affect the waterfowl that drink from those water sources.
The first human trial of a DNA vaccine designed to prevent H5N1 avian influenza infection began on December 21, 2006, when the vaccine was administered to the first volunteer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD. Scientists from the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the NIH Institutes, designed the vaccine. The vaccine does not contain any infectious material from the influenza virus.
Cornell researchers studied a virus related to the avian influenza virus to see whether a hypothetical mutated form of H5N1 could infect people through drinking and wastewater systems.
A gene known to be a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease puts out the welcome mat for the virus that causes cold sores, allowing the virus to be more active in the brain compared to other forms of the gene. The new findings, published online in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, add some scientific heft to the idea, long suspected by some scientists, that herpes somehow plays a role in bringing about Alzheimer’s disease.
Caucasian patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) are more likely to have hepatic steatosis, or fat in the liver, compared to African-American patients. However, steatosis is not associated with HCV treatment response.
Infection with the human papilloma virus, the major cause of cervical cancer, is forever. The virus remains latent in skin cells, ready to flare up at any time to create warts on the skin or the genitals. A new finding by UC Berkeley’s Michael Botchan and colleagues offers hope that a drug can halt spread of the virus into new cells, and perhaps even eliminate the virus from the body.
Vietnamese family’s four members in southern Vietnam are found suffering from pneumonia. Tests for avian bird flu are negative. These people are not infected with the avian bird flu virus.
Drawing upon a massive database established with funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), scientists have completed the most comprehensive analysis to date of published influenza A virus epitopes–the critical sites on the virus that are recognized by the immune system.