It is estimated that U.S. healthcare institutions spend $9.8 billion annually treating healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) rank among the top five most expensive HAIs (Zimlichman, 2013).
Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a major health concern, despite being largely preventable. Standard precautions are the minimum infection prevention practices that apply to all patient care, regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status of the patient, in any setting where healthcare is delivered. These basic but effective practices are designed to both protect healthcare workers (HCW) and prevent HCWs from spreading infections among patients.
Rapidly diagnosing infectious disease is critical to limiting its spread and containing an outbreak; as the world has witnessed over the past year with the spread of Ebolavirus disease. Scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio are receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health in the form of a $2.36 million R01 grant over the next five years to focus efforts on exploring and developing a novel mechanism of Filovirus detection – using llama antibodies.
Vanderbilt University researchers have joined a multi-center effort led by Pennsylvania-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. to accelerate development of potential antibody therapies against the often-lethal Ebola virus.
University of Georgia entomologists have unlocked one of the hormonal mechanisms that allow mosquitoes to produce eggs. The results provide insight into how reproduction is regulated in female mosquitoes, which transmit agents that cause malaria and other diseases in humans and domestic animals. Their work was published in the April edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
An interdisciplinary team from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Profectus BioSciences, Inc. has developed a quick-acting vaccine that is both safe and effective with a single dose against the Ebola strain that killed thousands of people in West Africa last year. These findings are detailed in the new edition of Nature.
When a whole country's public health is at stake, making the wrong policy choices can cost lives and money. That's why researchers have worked to develop computer simulations of epidemics that can model individual behaviors and interactions to predict the spread of disease and the efficacy of interventions.