Health News
Blood hounds, cadaver dogs, and other canines who serve humanity may soon have a new partner - disease detector dogs - thanks to an unusual experiment in which scientists trained mice to identify feces of ducks infected with bird influenza. Migrating ducks, geese, and other birds can carry and spread flu viruses over wide geographic areas, where the viruses may possibly spread to other species...
New Compound May be Effective Against Chagas' Disease A new compound may offer an effective drug candidate against the deadly tropical infection, Chagas' disease say researchers from Brazil. They report their findings in the August 2010 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy...
The influenza virus, scientists well know, is a crafty, shape-shifting organism, constantly changing form to evade host immune systems and jump from one species, like birds, to another, mammals...
USAID Program To Prevent Spread Of Bird Flu In Bangladesh Expands All Headline News reports on a USAID-funded initiative to prevent the spread of bird flu in Bangladesh...
Intercell AG (VSE: ICLL) announced the results of a Phase II clinical trial of its investigational Vaccine Enhancement Patch (VEP) system for avian H5N1 influenza. In this development program, Intercell is working under a contract with the U.S...
The Field Museum and the University of Chicago have announced the establishment of the Emerging Pathogens Project, a unique research program to study the evolution of species-switching parasites or pathogens that result in diseases such as bird flu, malaria, and AIDS. Many diseases have a long infection history in animals...
Though the world has made "great strides" in eliminating H5N1 (avian flu) from poultry since the "peak of its outbreak in 2006" in 63 countries, the virus persists in Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Indonesia and Vietnam, VOA News reports (DeCapua, 4/16). Juan Lubroth, the U.N...
Pathogens can now be easily tracked in time and space as they evolve, an advance that could revolutionize both public health and inform national security in the fight against infectious diseases...
Antibodies are immune molecules that have a key role in protecting against infection with influenza virus. The target of the protective antibodies is the influenza protein HA, which varies so dramatically among influenza viruses that it is used to classify them into subtypes (H1-H16)...
A University of Alberta-led research team has discovered an influenza detector gene that could potentially prevent the transmission of the virus to humans. Katharine Magor, a U of A associate professor of biology, has identified the genetic detector that allows ducks to live, unharmed, as the host of influenza...