Black Death, a mid-14th century plague, is undoubtedly the most famous historical pandemic. Within only five years it killed 30 percent to 50 percent of the European population. Unfortunately it didn't stop there. Plague resurged throughout Europe leading to continued high mortality and social unrest over the next three centuries.
There may be a "silver bullet" for Ebola, a family of hemorrhagic viruses, one of which has killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa in the past two years. Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (UTMB) reported today in the journal Cell that they have isolated human monoclonal antibodies from Ebola survivors which can neutralize multiple species of the virus.
While most West Nile Virus (WNV) infections in humans are asymptomatic and go unnoticed, the virus causes serious and sometimes fatal neurologic illness in some people. A study published on January 21 in PLOS Pathogens suggests that an exaggerated and abnormal immune response contributes to the development of neurologic symptoms following West Nile virus infection.
In use for more than 20 years, the varicella zoster virus vaccine for chickenpox and shingles is considered an essential medicine by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine have found, in rare instances, a link between the vaccine and corneal inflammation. It is a finding the researchers say should be discussed by primary care physicians and patients with a history of eye inflammation before getting vaccinated.
Researchers at Duke Health are fine-tuning a test that can determine whether a respiratory illness is caused by infection from a virus or bacteria so that antibiotics can be more precisely prescribed.
Virulent strains of bacteria are ones that produce "virulence factors," small molecules and proteins that convert a benign bacterium into a pathogen. They make the difference between E. coli that are helpful members of our gut microbiome and the E. coli O157:H7 responsible for the Jack-in-the-Box outbreak. Virulence factors allow bacteria to evade the human immune system, to infect tissues and cells and to establish a foothold within the body. Without them, bacteria would be rapidly cleared by the immune system and unable to establish an infection.Tim Wencewicz, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, thinks we should be looking for agents that block virulence factors rather than continuing to search for ones to kill bacteria outright. In his vision, antivirulence antibiotics would replace failing bactericidal ones.
Biophysicists have discovered why the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB) are naturally somewhat resistant to antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. Their findings, based on mapping the detailed three-dimensional structure of the drugs interacting with an essential enzyme in the TB germ, also reveal why some TB drugs are more potent than others and suggest how drug developers can make fluoroquinolones more efficacious against mutations that make the lung disease drug resistant.