News
A Little Goes a Long Way: Stemming Antibiotic Resistance by Using Less
August 21st 2015Prompt initiation of antibiotics to treat infections has been proven to reduce mortality and save countless lives. But evidence has shown that use of these drugs far exceeds what is clinically necessary, leading to patient harm, excess costs and an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria worldwide.
Cellphone Data Help Scientists Track Infectious Diseases
August 20th 2015Tracking mobile phone data is often associated with privacy issues, but these vast datasets could be the key to understanding how infectious diseases are spread seasonally, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Biologist Observes a Paradigm Shift in Multi-drug Resistance
August 20th 2015Bacteria are pretty wily creatures. Take for example, an organism such as Salmonella, which which are killed by antibiotics in lab tests, but can become highly resistant in the body. It is an example of what UC Santa Barbara biologist Michael Mahan refers to as the Trojan horse strategy. Identified through new research conducted by Mahan and his colleagues, the Trojan horse strategy may explain why antibiotics are ineffective in some patients despite lab tests that predict otherwise. The research findings appear in the journal EBioMedicine.
Animal Trial to Test Promising Vaccine for H1N1
August 20th 2015An H1N1 vaccine developed at the University of Nebraska Medical Center will enter a definitive round of testing this month, and researchers hope to establish its ability to ward off the virus. Made possible by a licensing deal brokered through UNMC's technology transfer office, UNeMed Corporation, the study will evaluate the vaccine on 30 to 40 pigs. If tests yield results as expected, Prommune, Inc. could begin offering an H1N1 vaccine to hog farmers as early as the end of the year, although full approval from the USDA would likely take another three or four years.
Synthetic DNA Vaccine Against MERS Induces Immunity
August 19th 2015A novel synthetic DNA vaccine can, for the first time, induce protective immunity against the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus in animal species, reported researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Team Applies Genomics Expertise to Analyze and Map Virus Sequence Database
August 19th 2015Viruses are tiny-merely millionths of a millimeter in diameter-but what they lack in size, they make up in quantity. “If you were to take all the viruses from the planet, and lay them side by side, the length would be 1,000 times the length of the Milky Way,” says David Ussery, who leads the comparative genomics group at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
