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Urinary tract infections can quickly move from being a merely miserable experience to a life-threatening condition. Untreated cases may trigger sepsis, which occurs when the immune system, in an attempt to fight off the infection, inadvertently activates body-wide inflammation that can cause blood clots and leaky blood vessels.

Using molecular modeling and large-scale molecular dynamic simulation, University of Illinois researchers constructed an atomic model of an immature retrovirus. The researchers, from the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois, published their work in the journal Structure.

Back to school is an annual reminder to make sure children are fully vaccinated. But vaccination is a life-long health concern and the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) urges adults to use the seasonal cue to ensure their own immunizations are up to date.

A web-based program to encourage more frequent handwashing reduces the risk of catching and passing on respiratory tract infections to other household members, a randomized trial of more than 16,000 UK households published in The Lancet has found. Users of the program, called PRIMIT, also reported fewer gastrointestinal infections, a lower demand for consultations with their doctors, and fewer antibiotic prescriptions.