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Globally, an estimated 71 million people are living with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV). Over decades of infection, chronic HCV infection results in progressive damage to the liver and an increased risk for end stage liver disease and liver cancer, making the virus the leading cause of liver-related deaths in the United States today. While effective combination therapies have recently been developed, HCV can evolve to become resistant to these antiviral drugs, potentially resulting in treatment failures. Resistance is particularly important for one class of medications used in treatment, for which the mechanism by which it stops growth of the virus is poorly understood. For the first time, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have identified how the class of antiviral drugs known as NS5A inhibitors interacts with the virus, and their findings show a difference between strains of HCV. These results were published in PLOS Pathogens.

A new study of infection by a virus that causes brain inflammation and seizures in a mouse model has shown increased levels of complement component C3. The C3 was produced by immune cells in the brain called microglia within the first few days after infection. C3 showed the greatest increase in expression in the brain compared to a variety of other complement components, cytokines, chemokines, and antigens measured in the study that is published in Viral Immunology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

Multidisciplinary teams face numerous challenges as they respond to an outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the remote, forested regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners are supporting the country’s Ministry of Health in all aspects of the response, including epidemiological investigation, surveillance, logistics and supplies, communications, and community engagement.

An electronic sepsis alert using a combination of vital signs, risk factors and physician judgment to identify children in a pediatric emergency department with severe sepsis reduced missed diagnoses by 76 percent. The results of the study, along with an accompanying editorial, were published online Friday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Improving Recognition of Pediatric Severe Sepsis in the Emergency Department: Contributions of a Vital Sign-Based Electronic Alert and Bedside Clinician Identification" and "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Use of Real-Time Tools to Identify Children with Severe Sepsis in the Pediatric Emergency Department").

New advice on which antibiotics to use for common infections and which to preserve for the most serious circumstances is among the additions to the World Health Organization (WHO) model list of essential medicines for 2017. Other additions include medicines for HIV, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and leukemia.

A clinical trial of an experimental vaccine to prevent infection with chikungunya virus is now enrolling healthy adult volunteers at three sites in the United States. The Phase 1/2 trial, which is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is being conducted at several NIAID-funded Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units. The candidate vaccine, MV-CHIKV, was developed by Themis Bioscience of Vienna, Austria.

Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York have discovered that bacteria living in the gut provide a first line of defense against severe Listeria infections. The study, which will be published June 6 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggests that providing these bacteria in the form of probiotics could protect individuals who are particularly susceptible to Listeria, including pregnant women and cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

In healthcare facilities, Clostridium difficile infections spread by transmission of bacterial spores. Appropriate sporicidal disinfectants are needed to prevent development of clusters and outbreaks. In this study by Kenters, et al. (2017), different cleaning/disinfecting wipes and sprays were tested for their efficacy against spores of distinctive C. difficile PCR ribotypes.

One of the primary ways physicians diagnose urinary tract infections is with a test that detects bacteria in urine. A new enhanced test, developed at Loyola University Chicago, detects significantly more bacteria than the standard test, according to a study presented at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans.

Seventy-three years ago Tuesday, on June 6, 1944, the D-Day invasion of Normandy was bolstered by millions of doses of a precious new substance: penicillin. On the other side of the Atlantic, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and other institutions had spent the last three years pursuing advances in penicillin production. Though discovered 16 years prior, the world’s first natural antibiotic was expensive and difficult to wring from the mold that makes it. By discovering new strains, isolating more productive mutants, and improving growing methods, UW-Madison biologists helped supply Allied troops with enough penicillin to treat life-threatening infections.

In a new research paper published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Thomas E. Finucane, MD, of the Johns Hopkins Geriatrics Center at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, suggests that prescribing antibiotics for urinary tract infections (UTIs) may often be avoided among older adults.

Findings from a study that looked at susceptibility trends of Staphylococcus aureus in U.S. hospital patients showed that key antibiotics used to treat the bacteria became more active over the course of the study, a rare occurrence. Researchers at JMI Laboratories evaluated susceptibility trends of antibiotics from 2009 to 2015 by testing clinical isolates from medical centers across the U.S. The research is presented on June 4th at the ASM Microbe conference in New Orleans.

The devastating effects of Zika virus on the brain of the developing fetus during infection in pregnancy have led to intensive research to understand the routes of Zika virus transmission and how the virus travels to and infects the fetus. What researchers have learned about how Zika virus impacts pregnancy and neonatal outcomes and the promise of new therapeutic interventions are presented in a comprehensive review article published in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (JICR) from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.