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The bacteria in a child’s gut appears to be influenced as early as its first year by ethnicity and breastfeeding, according to a new study from McMaster University. And while stable gut bacteria, called microbiota, may not be established until one to three years after birth, the infant gut bacteria seems to be an important indicator of immune function, nutrient metabolism and could offer protection from pathogens. The study was recently published in Genome Medicine.

Before Ebola virus ever struck West Africa, locals were already on the lookout for a deadly pathogen: Lassa virus. With thousands dying from Lassa every year-and the potential for the virus to cause even larger outbreaks-researchers are committed to designing a vaccine to stop it. Now, a team led by staff scientist Kathryn Hastie and professor Erica Ollmann Saphire at the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has solved the structure of the viral machinery that Lassa virus uses to enter human cells. Their study, published June 2, 2017 in the journal Science, is the first to show a key piece of the viral structure, called the surface glycoprotein, for any member of the deadly arenavirus family.

The call came from the World Health Organization (WHO) director-general in May 2016 for a renewed attack on the global spread of vector-borne diseases.

The vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV) is proving to have significant population-level effects in Connecticut, with rates of precancerous lesions caused by HPV down drastically among young women, a new Yale School of Public Health study finds.

Subgroups of tuberculosis (TB)-causing bacteria can persist even when antibiotics wipe out most of the overall population. The need to eliminate these persistent subpopulations is one reason why TB treatment regimens are so lengthy. Now, researchers have shown that a single protein allows mycobacteria to generate diverse populations that can avoid TB drugs. The protein may be a target for intervention; blocking it might result in less mycobacterial diversity and shorten TB treatment courses. The research was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Surviving the treacherous journey through the human body from the mouth to the colon takes a special kind of bacterial pathogen. Shigella - a group of bacteria responsible for much of the diarrheal disease affecting children in the developing world - travels unimpeded from the mouth to the colon, where they unleash powerful machinery to trigger debilitating diarrhea. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have been looking not only at how Shigella survives this journey but also how it takes advantage of substances that would kill many less persistent organisms. Each year Shigella is responsible for at least 80 million infections and approximately 700,000 deaths worldwide. Long-term effects for Shigella survivors can include impaired physical and cognitive development, poor gastrointestinal health, reactive arthritis or kidney damage depending on the strain causing infection. Although 99 percent of cases occur in developing nations, approximately half a million occur in the U.S. each year.

Princeton researchers have developed a way to place onto surfaces special coatings that chemically "communicate" with bacteria, telling them what to do. The coatings, which could be useful in inhibiting or promoting bacterial growth as needed, possess this controlling power over bacteria because, in effect, they "speak" the bugs' own language.

Real-time imaging of influenza infection in mice is a promising new method to quickly monitor disease progression and to evaluate whether candidate vaccines and treatments are effective in this animal model, according to National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists. A group from the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) evaluated the live imaging system as a potential alternative to traditional methods of assessing investigative influenza vaccines and treatment in mice, which can be time consuming and require more study animals for valid statistical comparison.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine report new evidence that immune cells infected with a latent form of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are able to proliferate, replenishing the reservoir of virus that is resistant to antiretroviral drug therapy. Although HIV can be controlled with therapy in most cases, the proliferation of such reservoir cells pose a persistent barrier to developing a cure for HIV, researchers say.

Researchers have developed a new, rapid biosensor for the early detection of even tiny concentrations of the human influenza A (H1N1) virus. Such early-stage diagnosis is crucial for averting a potential pandemic outbreak, as antiviral medication must be administered in a timely fashion. Conventional tests for detecting the flu virus are often slow and expensive, and can miss early viral infections. In contrast, the new biosensor measures tiny changes in voltage in an electrically conductive polymer to quickly detect virus concentrations almost 100 times smaller than the limit of currently available kits. The work was done at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU), in a collaboration between the Institute of Biomaterials and Bioengineering and the Department of Molecular Virology.

The quest to develop a cure for HIV has long been plagued by a seemingly simple question: How do doctors determine if someone is cured? The virus has a knack for lying dormant in immune cells at levels undetectable to all but the most expensive and time-consuming tests. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health announced today in Nature Medicine that they've created a test sensitive enough to detect "hidden" HIV, and yet is faster, less labor-intensive and less expensive than the current "gold standard" test.

Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have made another important advance in HIV vaccine design. The development was possible thanks to previous studies at TSRI showing the structures of a protein on HIV's surface, called the envelope glycoprotein. The scientists used these structures to design a mimic of the viral protein from a different HIV subtype, subtype C, which is responsible for the majority of infections worldwide.

Zika virus infection passes efficiently from a pregnant monkey to its fetus, spreading inflammatory damage throughout the tissues that support the fetus and the fetus’s developing nervous system, and suggesting a wider threat in human pregnancies than generally appreciated. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison infected four pregnant rhesus macaque monkeys at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center with a Zika virus dose similar to what would be transferred by a mosquito bite, and found evidence that the virus was present in each monkey’s fetus.

With mosquito season looming in the Northern Hemisphere, doctors and researchers are poised to take on a new round of Zika virus infections. Now, a new study by a large group of international researchers led by scientists at the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) explains how Zika virus entered the United States via Florida in 2016 -- and how it might re-enter the country this year.

Whether it's soap-and-water handwashing or using an antiseptic hand wash, an alcohol-based handrub (ABHR), or a surgical hand antisepsis product, hand hygiene remains a cornerstone of infection prevention and control practice. Despite indications that hand hygiene can help control the transmission of infectious microorganisms as part of a multi-modal approach, as well as innovations in product and dispenser design to enhance the user experience, hand hygiene rates remain sub-optimally low.