Immunology

History Of Syphilis

In the work "Tractado contra el mal serpentino" written in 1510 and published in 1539, Ruy Diaz de Isla refers to have cured, during the travel of return in Europe, many members of the shipment of Columbus, affections from certain luetic manifest ...

Article - Camillo Di Cicco - Mar 17 2010 - 4:37am

First Ever Map Of Emerging-Disease Hotspots

Deadly emerging diseases have risen steeply across the world and an international research team has provided the first scientific evidence mapping the outbreaks’ main sources. They say: New diseases originating from wild animals in poor nations are the gre ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 20 2008 - 5:36pm

Study: TRIM22 Gene Can Block The Spread Of HIV

A team of researchers at the University of Alberta, including a scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, have discovered a gene that is able to block HIV, and thought to in turn prevent the onset of AIDS. Dr. Stephen Barr, a researcher in the Departmen ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 28 2008 - 11:26pm

Biologists Diagnose Cause Of Two 20th Century Flu Epidemics

The exchange of genetic material between two closely related strains of the influenza A virus may have caused the 1947 and 1951 human flu epidemics, according to biologists. The findings could help explain why some strains cause major pandemics and others ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 4 2008 - 11:41am

Prion Diseases Transmitted In Milk

Scrapie can be transmitted to lambs through milk, according to new research published in BMC Veterinary Research. The study provides important information on the transmission of this prion-associated disease and the control of scrapie in affected flocks. S ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2008 - 6:44pm

EMI- Continental DNA Markers Trace Origins Of Disease

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa have developed a technique called expected mutual information (EMI)to detect the ancestry of disease genes in hybrid, or mixed, human population ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 8 2008 - 1:36pm

How Did These Ugandan Monkeys Acquire An Unknown Poxvirus?

Red colobus monkeys in a park in western Uganda have been exposed to an unknown orthopoxvirus, a pathogen related to the viruses that cause smallpox, monkeypox and cowpox. Most of the monkeys screened harbor antibodies to a virus that is similar – but not ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 22 2008 - 12:17pm

AIDS 25 Years Later- What Do We Know?

On the 25th anniversary of the first scientific article linking a retrovirus to AIDS, Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reflects on his experience treating and studying HIV/AIDS for the past quar ...

Article - News Staff - May 15 2008 - 11:18am

In 80 Percent Of A Study's Newly Infected Patients, A Single HIV Variant Caused Transmission

A new study reveals the genetic identity of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the version responsible for sexual transmission, in unprecedented detail. The finding provides important clues in the ongoing search for an effective HIV/AIDS vaccine, said re ...

Article - News Staff - May 16 2008 - 8:45am

The Emerging Role Of Infection In Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most frequent cause of dementia, is a form of amyloidosis. It has been known for a century that dementia, brain atrophy and amyloidosis can be caused by chronic bacterial infections, namely by Treponema pallidum in the atrophi ...

Article - News Staff - May 22 2008 - 3:23pm