Researchers from the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology announced today the results of a first of its kind study analyzing all published data worldwide on influenza A virus antibody and T cell epitopes. Antibody and T cell epitopes are small sites on a virus that are the targets of the immune response, and they are critical for developing therapies and vaccines to combat infectious disease.
The death toll from the outbreak of Rift Valley fever in Kenya’s Wajir District has risen to 52 after four people reportedly died. According to reports, the Rift Valley fever killed three other people in neighbouring Isiolo District.
The Avian and Human Influenza Facility of the World Bank announced today that six grants with a combined value of US$28 million have been approved to assist some 13 countries in five regions to fight the threat posed by avian and human influenza:
Auckland health authorities are on high alert for a possible outbreak of infectious hepatitis A after a sick McDonald’s worker handled food at one of Auckland’s busiest restaurants. The worker may have exposed hundreds of customers to the virus during an evening shift at the Greenlane restaurant just over a fortnight ago.
Vietnam health officials has reported first suspected cases of human bird flu in this year. Four members of a family have been hospitalized with symptoms of bird flu.
Scientists at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville have succeeded in imaging, in unprecedented detail, the virus that causes influenza.
A 26-year-old Egyptian man died of bird flu on Wednesday, the third member of his extended family to die of the virus, a World Health Organisation (WHO) report highlighted.
A 15-year-old girl became the ninth fatal victim of the avian influenza virus and the first minor to lose her life to the disease in Egypt, said health ministry media official Sayyid Al-Abbasi.
Egyptian health ministry reported that a 15-year-old Egyptian girl has died of bird flu. Nine people in Egypt have died from the H5N1 strain of avian flu since the virus first appeared in the country’s poultry in February.
Much like flipping a light switch, the hepatitis C virus turns on human immune defenses upon entering the body but also turns off those defenses by manipulating interaction of key cellular proteins, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.