Response efforts to outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Africa can benefit from a standardized sampling strategy that focuses on the carcasses of gorillas, chimpanzees and other species known to succumb to the virus, according to a consortium of wi…
Scientists are reporting development and testing of a new series of drugs that could finally stop the fox tapeworm – which causes a rare but life-threatening disease in humans – dead in its tracks. The report, which appears in ACS’ Journal of Medicinal…
From tiny villages in developing nations to suburban kitchens in the United States, dangerous strains of E. coli bacteria sicken millions of people each year – and kill untold numbers of children. Now, new research from the University of Michigan Healt…
Serogroup B meningococcal strains have become the major cause of bacterial meningitis in many European and North American regions. A new study published Online First in The Lancet Infectious Diseases reveals that researchers are now one step closer to …
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and Rockefeller University have identified the first gene to be linked to a rare condition in which babies are born without a spleen, putting those children at risk of dying from infections they cannot defen…
Levaquin (levofloxacin) has been approved by the FDA for the treatment and prevention of the plague. Levofloxacin is a synthetic antibiotic of the fluoroquinolones drug class; it is currently used for the treatment of severe bacterial infection, or inf…
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have unraveled a complex chemical pathway that enables bacteria to form clusters called biofilms. Such improved understanding might eventually aid the development of new treatments targeting biofilms, which …
According to a study in The Lancet , WHO members made it their goal to reduce measle mortality rates by 90% before 2010. However, the authors, from Penn State University, demonstrate that measles mortality has fallen only 74%. The study, by Dr Peter …
The death rate from measles worldwide has dropped by 74% during the first decade of this century, an impressive figure, but less than the 90% target, researchers from WHO (World Health Organization), Penn State University, and the CDC (Centers for Dise…
MIT and Boston University researchers have discovered that while antibiotics attack many parts of bacteria cells, it is the damage they cause to their DNA that inflicts the fatal blow. They write about their findings in a paper published online on 2…
