The nation's first, prospective registry of complicated skin and soft tissue infections (cSSTIs), known as SSTIR (the Skin and Soft Tissue Infection Hospital Registry), has begun enrolling patients.

Scientists at the University of York have helped to reveal more about the way bacteria can attach to human tissues.

Our bodies rely on the production of potent, or 'high affinity', antibodies to fight infection. The process is very complex, yet Sydney scientists have discovered that it hinges on a single molecule, a growth factor, without which it cannot function.

When a person develops a sore or a boil, it erupts, drawing to it immune system cells that fight the infection. Then it resolves and flattens into the skin, often leaving behind a mark or a scar.

A study from researchers at Children's Hospital Boston published in Pediatrics found that a simple infection control intervention in elementary schools – disinfecting frequently-touched surfaces and using alcohol-based hand sanitizers – helped reduce illness-related student absenteeism.

High living standards and the life style connected to them seem to promote the development of autoimmune diseases and allergic symptoms. This has lead to the assumption that the immune system begins to overreact to the organism’s own structures or to exogenous non-infectious proteins, i.e. allergens, when it does not have to work hard enough to protect the individual from infections.

Just as fire engines arrive quickly at the scene to save people and property, the cells that fight viruses have to reach the site of an infection promptly to mount a protective response.

Now new research published in the open access journal BMC Cell Biology shows that nicotine affects neutrophils, the short-lived white blood cells that defend against infection, by reducing their ability to seek and destroy bacteria.

Researchers at the University of Washington have uncovered how the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, including the notorious MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staph aureus) “superbug” strains, resists our body's natural defenses against infection. The work, which was featured on the cover of the March 21 issue of Science, could lead to new ways to fight the bacteria.

The enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus-PCR (ERIC-PCR) method has been used to fingerprint the kinetics of microbial community of fecal samples of ducklings orally infected with S. enteritidis. This has yielded valuable insights towards fully understanding the pathogenesis of S. enteritidis infection.

The Uukuniemi virus helps to explain the infection mechanism of bunyaviruses causing hemorrhagic fevers and encephalitis

Blacks have almost double the rate of severe sepsis—an overwhelming infection of the bloodstream accompanied by acute organ dysfunction—as whites, according to recent research.