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Smallpox virus, which killed millions of humans through the ages, ranks among the world's most feared bioterrorism agents. In a new report, virologists from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and their collaborators at Oklahoma State University demonstrate how poxviruses such as smallpox defeat the body's host immune defenses. The implications extend beyond viral infections to cancer therapy, says senior author Yan Xiang, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, UT Health Science Center.

Viruses that attack bacteria -- bacteriophages -- can be fussy: they only inject their genetic material into the bacteria that suit them. The fussiness of bacteriophages can be exploited in order to detect specific species of bacteria. Scientists from Warsaw have just demonstrated that bacteriophage-based biosensors will be much more efficient if prior to the deposition on the surface of the bacteriophage sensor their orientation is ordered in electric field.

When you get cold sores, the reason is likely related to stress. In particular, the neurons in which the herpes simplex virus (HSV) reside, are under stress. For the first time, researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine discovered a cellular mechanism that allows the virus to reactivate. They also found how brain cells are duped into allowing bits of virus to escape the very repressive environment in neurons and cause disease.

Within weeks, flu will start spreading across North America, sickening millions of people. It will hit people with health problems and weak immune systems hardest, and may kill tens of thousands of them. Multiple national recommendations urge all healthcare workers to get the influenza vaccination, to reduce the chances they will pass the virus on to their patients. But a new study finds that more than half of hospitals still don't require their doctors, nurses and other health care providers to get vaccinated against the flu -- despite the fact that they're in contact with the people most vulnerable to flu every day.

An innovative inpatient care model utilizing multidisciplinary accountable care teams reduced hospital stays and lowered costs even beyond those associated with fewer days of hospitalization, according to a new study published in the December issue of the Journal of Hospital Medicine. The Accountable Care Teams model, ACT model for short, is based on three foundational domains: enhancing interpersonal collaboration between healthcare team members, enabling data-driven decisions, and providing leadership.

Researchers at the University of Warwick have worked with Coventry-based Medherant, a Warwick spinout company, to produce and patent the world’s first ibuprofen patch delivering the drug directly through skin to exactly where it is needed at a consistent dose rate.

By following a DNA trail through the secretive world of heroin use, researchers may have shown the way for public health officials to solve infectious disease problems affecting the wider population. Led by Paul Keim, Regents’ Professor and Cowden Endowed Chair of Microbiology at Northern Arizona University, a collaborative team of international scientists shone new light on an old question about injectional anthrax by demonstrating the latest advances in whole genome sequencing. Researchers from Germany, England and the United States reconstructed a decades-old outbreak of injectional anthrax by DNA analysis of the anthrax conveyed to victims from injecting heroin.

In the early hours of Oct. 3, 2015, rockets slammed into a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing at least 14 health workers and injuring 37. An MSF clinic in the southern Yemen city of Taiz was bombed on Dec. 2, 2015, injuring nine people, including two MSF staff. Since 2012, almost 60 percent of hospitals in Syria have been partially or completely destroyed, and more than half of the country’s health workers have fled or been killed.