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Some of the roughly 1 million cases a year of the parasitic disease leishmaniasis don't fit with the standard definition of the disease--the patients have unusual symptoms and front-line medicines don't work. Now, researchers have discovered why many of these cases are so different--they're caused by parasites with distinct genetic variations. The finding, reported in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, was made by studying patients in northeast Brazil but may hold true elsewhere around the world.

Scientists have created the first validated mathematical model of an important cellular defense mechanism against the bacterium Salmonella, according to a new study in PLOS Computational Biology. Worldwide, Salmonella is responsible for millions of infections and thousands of deaths every year. When Salmonella enters a human cell under certain conditions, a process called xenophagy may target the bacterium for destruction. Understanding how cells defend against Salmonella is essential to develop new treatments, but xenophagy is not yet well-understood.

Immune system cells known as cytotoxic T cells attack blood vessels and cause fatal swelling in the brains of mice with a condition that mirrors a severe complication of malaria in humans. These are the findings of a new study published in PLOS Pathogens.

How many mosquitoes live in your neighborhood? How many mosquito bites have you and your neighbors gotten this week? Answering these questions--and gauging how mosquito populations change over time or after a control strategy is implemented--has historically been difficult. Now, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have described a blood test that can be used to assess human exposure to Aedes mosquitos. The test, which measures antibodies to an Aedes salivary peptide, showed decreased human exposure to mosquito bites after a vector control program.

Until now, a pathogen's ability to move through the body has been overlooked as a possible trigger of immune response, but new research from the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine found that motility will indeed alarm the host and activate an immune response. The team, led by Balázs Rada, an assistant professor in the department of infectious diseases in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine, studied Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic bacterium that can wreak havoc on patients who have a weakened immune system--like burn patients or those battling HIV, cystic fibrosis, cancer or pneumonia.

Kansas State University researchers have discovered the secret ingredient to improving kitchen food safety: include handwashing reminders and meat thermometer instructions in published recipes.

Scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health developed a computer model to predict the onset, duration, and magnitude of influenza outbreaks for New York City boroughs and neighborhoods. They found the model effective in a test using data from 2008-2013; results appear in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

A new testing methodology based on metagenomics could accelerate the diagnosis of foodborne bacterial outbreaks, allowing public health officials to identify the microbial culprits in less than a day. The methodology could also identify co-infections with secondary microbes, determine the specific variant of the pathogen, and help alert health officials to the presence of new or unusual pathogens.