Infection Control Today Magazine

Vector-Borne Diseases

Researchers Discover Novel Antiviral Immune Pathway in the Mosquito

As mosquito-borne viral diseases like West Nile fever, dengue fever, and chikungunya fever spread rapidly around the globe, scientists at Virginia Tech are working to understand the mosquito's immune system and how the viral pathogens that cause these diseases are able to ...More
5 weeks ago
Posted in News
Experts Assess Lack of Success in Prevention and Control of Lyme Disease

Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector-borne disease in the United States, with the majority of cases occurring in the Northeast. It has been three decades since the agent of the disease, the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, and the ticks that vector it were ...More
January 5, 2012
Posted in News
New Tick-Borne Disease is Discovered

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy have discovered a brand new tick-borne infection. Since the discovery, eight cases have been described around the world, three of them in the Gothenburg area, Sweden. In July 2009 a 77-year-old man from ...More
December 6, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Fleas Collected from Norway Rats in Downtown LA Carry Human Pathogen

Most fleas collected from rats trapped in downtown Los Angeles, California carried microbes from the genus, Bartonella, many of which are human pathogens, according to a paper in the November issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The research team limited their ...More
November 16, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Flight Patterns Reveal How Mosquitoes Find Hosts to Transmit Deadly Diseases

The carbon dioxide we exhale and the odors our skins emanate serve as crucial cues to female mosquitoes on the hunt for human hosts to bite and spread diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever. Two entomologists at the University of California, Riverside have now ...More
October 3, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Researchers Say Local Antibiotic Therapy Stops Lyme Disease

Lyme disease is a dangerous disease which is transmitted by ticks. Blood-sucking ticks ingest the agents that cause the disease – bacteria of the species Borrelia burgdorferi and its relatives – during a blood meal, and subsequently transmit them to the next victim they ...More
September 15, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
U.S. Blood Supply Vulnerable to Parasitic Infection Spread by Ticks

Babesia, a tickborne parasite of red blood cells, is being transmitted through blood transfusions, according to results of a collaborative study, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of data from the past three decades. Transfusion-associated cases of ...More
September 5, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Sandfly Saliva Provides Important Clues for New Leishmaniasis Treatments

For millions of people who live under the constant threat of Leishmania infection, a new discovery by Brazilian scientists may lead to new breakthroughs, preventing these parasites from taking hold in the body or reducing the severity of infections once they occur. In a new ...More
August 31, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Common Bacterium Stops Mosquitoes from Transmitting Dengue Virus

Strains of a bacterium commonly found in fruit flies can prevent the Aedes aegypti mosquito from transmitting the virus that causes dengue fever, researchers have found. Their discovery could lead to a more effective way to control dengue worldwide. North Carolina State ...More
August 24, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Software Predicted Virus Risk in California WNV Epidemic

A computerized epidemiological model of the spread of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus in 17 counties of California in 2005 successfully predicted where 81.6 percent of human cases of the disease would arise and defined high-risk areas where the risk of infection turned ...More
August 11, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens

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