Extreme weather events can unleash a 'perfect storm' of infectious diseases, research study says

Every year, about 500 million people worldwide are infected with the parasite that causes dysentery, a global medical burden that among infectious diseases is second only to malaria. In a new study appearing in the June 15 issue of Genes and Development, Johns Hopkins researchers may have found a way to ease this burden by discovering a new enzyme that may help the dysentery-causing amoeba evade the immune system.

Influenza outbreaks were shorter and resulted in fewer cases and fewer deaths at long-term care facilities that started residents on preventive antiviral medications within five days of the first case, compared to those that started later, according to a new study in the July 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, currently available online.

Monitoring extreme weather, such as periods of high temperature, is one way to predict the timing and intensity of infectious diseases like cryptosporidiosis, an intestinal disease that causes upset stomach and diarrhea.

In an online paper in the journal Nature, Yale University researchers funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, explain how a common ingredient in many vaccines stimulates and interacts with the immune system to help provide protection against infectious diseases.

Scientists in Italy have discovered a new perspective in the study of infectious disease. Normally, such studies are based upon laboratory work looking at an organism and how it works within the human body.

If you read the papers, you probably have the wrong idea about how you are most likely to catch a disease like tuberculosis (TB).

The bacteria that cause Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne illness in the United States, can linger in mouse tissues long after a full round of antibiotic treatment is completed, report researchers from the University of California, Davis.

Artemisinin-based suppositories can help ‘buy time’ for malaria patients who face a delay in accessing effective, injectable antimalarials, according to research published in the online open access journal BMC Infectious Diseases.

More that 1.2 million deaths could be prevented in South Africa over the next five years by accelerating efforts to provide access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to a study released online today by the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Mankind’s age-old battle against infectious diseases stands to rage on and on, unless scientists develop a new generation of triple-action antibiotics, according to an article scheduled for the March 28 issue of ACS’ monthly Journal of Natural Products.

Researchers in Colombia, South America, describe a new strategy for designing the next generation of synthetic vaccines that could lead to more effective treatments for fighting malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and other infectious diseases.