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WHO's Medical Detectives Work With Health Authorities to Solve a Mystery

On a hot afternoon in November 2014, Benin’s minister of health, Dr. Dorothée Kinde Gazard and WHO country representative Dr. Youssouf Gamatié visited the Hôpital de Saint Jean de Dieu in Tanguiéta, in the country’s northwest. They were in a somber frame of mind. Four employees of the hospital had died from a severe febrile illness, some with signs of a viral hemorrhagic fever, over a period of two weeks – an event that for public health experts sounds the alarm for an outbreak of a dangerous infectious disease. Given the current Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa, one thing immediately came to mind – Benin could become the fourth.

Ebola Diaries: Fighting an Uphill Battle

Dr. Rob Fowler is a Canadian critical care physician from Toronto who was recruited by the World Health Organization in August 2013 to work with the Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases clinical team. When the Ebola outbreak was confirmed in late March 2014, Fowler was part of the first clinical response team to deploy to Guinea. In the months to follow, Fowler worked at an Ebola treatment center, focusing on treating dehydration, organ dysfunction and shock to drive down mortality rates. 

Bioplastics Show Promise in Search for Antibacterial Packaging

Bioplastics made from protein sources such as albumin and whey have shown significant antibacterial properties, findings that could eventually lead to their use in plastics used in medical applications such as wound healing dressings, sutures, catheter tubes and drug delivery, according to a recent study by the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences. The bioplastic materials could also be used for food packaging.

HIV Can Spread Early, Evolve in Patients' Brains

The AIDS virus can genetically evolve and independently replicate in patients' brains early in the illness process, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have discovered. An analysis of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), a window into brain chemical activity, revealed that for a subset of patients HIV had started replicating within the brain within the first four months of infection. CSF in 30 percent of HIV-infected patients tracked showed at least transient signs of inflammation -- suggesting an active infectious process -- or viral replication within the first two years of infection. There was also evidence that the mutating virus can evolve a genome in the central nervous system that is distinct from that in the periphery.

NIH Study Finds No Evidence of Accelerated Ebola Virus Evolution in West Africa

The Ebola virus circulating in humans in West Africa is undergoing relatively few mutations, none of which suggest that it is becoming more severe or transmissible, according to a National Institutes of Health study in Science. The study compares virus sequencing data from samples taken from patients in Guinea (March 2014), Sierra Leone (June 2014) and Mali (November 2014).