Brazilian researchers from the D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR) and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) have demonstrated the harmful effects of Zika virus (ZIKV) in human neural stem cells, neurospheres and brain organoids. Since ZIKV has been gradually established as a direct cause of central nervous system malformations, this study help to elucidate the etiological nature of the recently increasing number of microcephaly cases in Brazil.
The recent epidemic of Zika virus infections in South and Latin America has raised serious concerns on its ramifications for the population in the Americas and spread of the virus worldwide. The Zika virus disease is a relatively new phenomenon for which sufficient and comprehensive data and investigative reports have not been available to date. Although first recognized as a new virus in 1947 in Uganda's Zika forest animals, its debilitating effect on human fetuses leading to babies being born with smaller braincases (microcephaly) was not known or well investigated until its epidemic form in Yap Island, Micronesia, in 2013 and now in the South American countries in 2015-16. The concern is so high that public health authorities in some countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Jamaica have asked their women to avoid pregnancies until the virus is better understood. The World Health Organization (WHO) has labeled the outbreak of such abnormalities as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
Enrollment has begun in the first of two multinational clinical trials of an intravenously delivered investigational antibody for preventing HIV infection. Known as the AMP Studies, for antibody-mediated prevention, the trials will test whether giving people an investigational anti-HIV antibody called VRC01 as an intravenous infusion every 8 weeks is safe, tolerable and effective at preventing HIV infection. With a projected enrollment of 4,200 adults, the trials also are designed to answer fundamental scientific questions for the fields of HIV prevention and vaccine research.
In humans, cholera is among the world’s most deadly diseases, killing as many as 140,000 persons a year, according to World Health Organization statistics. But in aquatic environments far away from humans, the same bacterium attacks neighboring microbes with a toxic spear – and often steals DNA from other microorganisms to expand its own capabilities.
With Canadian government funding, a team of innovators from Canada and Mexico have successfully tested a low cost, environmentally-friendly way of destroying the eggs of the mosquito genus that spreads dengue, and likely spreading the Zika virus.
Griffith University's Institute for Glycomics has made a promising discovery in the treatment and prevention of human parainfluenza virus. Institute director Mark von Itzstein and his team have shown that two existing drugs readily available on the market can work together to more effectively treat the virus.
Increasing temperatures will enlarge Europe's seasonal window for the potential spread of mosquito-borne viral disease, expanding the geographic areas at risk for a dengue epidemic to include much of Europe. The findings by researchers at Umeå University in Sweden are published in the journal EBioMedicine.
Scientists at the University of Queensland and the University of California San Francisco have found a new way to inhibit the growth of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). UQ School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences deputy head professor James De Voss said the discovery held promise for the development of treatments.
In order to determine where bed bug outbreaks are occurring and the best way to prevent and control infestations, entomologists examined 2,372 apartments in New Jersey and looked at factors such as the age, race, and gender of the inhabitants. The results are published in the Journal of Medical Entomology.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and Ministry of Health teams in Liberia and Guinea are investigating the origins of transmission in Liberia’s latest flare-up after learning that a woman who died from Ebola in Liberia last week had recently traveled from Guinea with her three young children.