Immunology

Artificially Composed Virus Fragment Could Be Key To A Chikungunya Vaccine

The mosquito transmitted Chikungunya virus, which causes Chikungunya fever, is spreading continuously. No vaccine is so far available. Researchers of the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut have experimentally recombined segments of the virus surface protein E2, thus c ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 27 2015 - 8:00pm

Why A Small Drop In Whooping Cough Vaccines Leads To A Case Upsurge

In 2012 the US saw a resurgence of pertussis (whooping cough) cases. the highest since 1955. Like in engineering, the reason a small increase in anti-science beliefs can lead to a big change in the number of cases comes down to degrees of freedom and the ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 23 2015 - 2:15pm

Dry Eye And Spring Allegens Directly Correlated In Study

New ophthalmology research finds that dry eye- the little understood culprit behind red, watery, gritty feeling eyes- strikes most often in spring, just as airborne allergens are surging, the first direct correlation between seasonal allergens and dry eye ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 28 2015 - 8:06am

Superbug Season Is Spring- And It's Most Prevalent In The Northeast US Region

Rates of infection with the deadly superbug Clostridium difficile were highest in the Northeast region of the country and in the spring season over the last 10 years, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Texas retrospectively analyz ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 29 2015 - 3:30pm

Sudden Oak Death Path Predicted By Citizen Scientists

Citizen science, where the public pitches in to make large-scale analyses of data possible, has successfully predicted the path of a deadly plant disease, Sudden Oak Death, over a six-year period.  The disease has killed millions of oak and tanoak trees i ...

Article - News Staff - May 1 2015 - 8:11am

Unexpected Role For Calcium In Tuberculosis

Many of us take a healthy immune system for granted. But for certain infants with rare, inherited mutations of certain genes, severe infection and death are stark consequences of their impaired immune responses. Now, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Cen ...

Article - News Staff - May 11 2015 - 10:00am

Shifting Migration Patterns Of Ticks Change Lyme Disease Patterns Also

Southern Indiana is an oasis free from Lyme disease, the condition most associated with the arachnids that are the second most common parasitic disease vector on Earth. But there are signs that this low-risk environment is changing, both in Indiana and in ...

Article - News Staff - May 14 2015 - 7:30am

Single Blood Markers For Disease Will Be A Thing Of The Past

A number of recent studies have reported on the use of biomarkers, particularly blood-based ones, that offer the potential for screening diseases such as cancer and HIV. A biomarker can be a gene, a gene mutation, protein, other molecule or clinical measu ...

Article - The Conversation - May 14 2015 - 8:00am

How Nigeria Beat The Ebola Virus In Three Months

The diagnosis of the first case of Ebola in Lagos, Nigeria in July last year set off alarm bells around the world. The fear was that it would trigger an apocalyptic epidemic that would make the outbreaks in Liberia, Sierra-Leone and Guinea, where 1322 cas ...

Article - The Conversation - May 18 2015 - 9:30am

Phage Spread Antibiotic Resistance

Investigators found that nearly half of the 50 chicken meat samples purchased from supermarkets, street markets, and butchers in Austria contained viruses that are capable of transferring antibiotic resistance genes from one bacterium to another- or from ...

Article - News Staff - May 18 2015 - 8:00am