A sudden loss of T cells -- white blood cells crucial to the immune system -- is not the trigger for the onset of AIDS, according to a study published in the September 2007 issue of the Journal of Immunology by a team of researchers at Tulane National Primate Research Center.

GPs are unnecessarily giving patients antibiotics for respiratory tract (RT) infections which would clear up on their own. Doctors tend to over-emphasise symptoms such as white spots in the throat, rather than looking at factors such as old age and co-morbidity, which would affect a patient's recovery, according to an article published in the online open access journal, BMC Family Practice.

Infection with the fungus Candida parapsilosis is a major problem for individuals in intensive care units, as well as for premature infants and immunocompromised adults. Despite this, little is known about which of its genes account for its virulence.

Scientists have shown for the first time that platelets, the cells needed for blood clotting, help white blood cells called neutrophils fight inflammation. The discovery was made by Ralph Kettritz, Professor of Medicine at the Medical Faculty of the Charite and investigator at the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany, and colleagues.

Most women who think they have a vaginal yeast infection are wrong and may be doing more harm than good in treating their problem, says a Saint Louis University researcher who presented her findings recently.

In work originating from the Bavarian Research Cooperation Prions (FORPRION), which ended in 2007, a team led by the scientist Prof. Dr. Christine Leib-Mösch has been able to show that prion proteins may activate endogenous retroviruses in infected brain cells.

The soy isoflavone genistin--at concentrations present in soy infant formula-- may reduce a baby’s susceptibility to rotavirus infections by as much as 74 percent, according to a University of Illinois study published in September’s Journal of Nutrition.

As if being admitted to the hospital weren’t bad enough, patients, once admitted, are at higher risk of becoming infected with a “superbug” bacterium, Clostridium difficile (C. difficile). The toxins produced by C. difficile kill human intestinal cells by causing them to burst open, allowing the bacteria to use them as fuel.

Scientists at MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology have for the first time recorded the entire genomic expression of both a host bacterium and an infecting virus over the eight-hour course of infection.

While rabies, an ancient scourge that still kills 70,000 every year in developing countries worldwide can be combated with a series of vaccines today, it nearly is always fatal when it reaches the brain.

If you sit on cold boulders or forget to wear your woollen underwear, you can develop a urinary tract infection. However, these diseases are more complicated than this, and in some cases they have a genetic background.

Hepatitis E virus infections can be fatal in pregnant women, but until recently doctors thought the disease was confined to China, India and developing countries.