New DISEASE Gaia Church
DISEASE: It's one of the Horsemen fighting all the Plague Species, like Homo Sapiens.
Dec 8, 05: A new study warns that performing monkeys in Indonesia carry several viruses that could infect humans during the close contact common to street shows. Scientists have long known that monkeys and other primates can be sources of new viruses that morph into types that can kill people. HIV is thought to have originated with primates in Africa and jumped species during contact with natives who eat their meat.
. . Performing monkeys in Jakarta, Indonesia carry several so-called retroviruses that are capable of infecting people but which might not show effects for years, it was announced today by researchers. Retroviruses reproduce by implanting their genetic material into a host cell’s DNA.
. . The monkeys were seen climbing on people and engaging in other close contact that could lead to a bite or scratch and then an infection of monkey fluid, the scientists said. Markets where performing monkeys are sold pose another threat, the study found. Different species of wild monkey and other animals are brought together in often unsanitary conditions. "The market is a condensed area for mixing species and pathogens."
. . The scientists took blood samples from 20 performing macaques in Jakarta. Here’s what they found in one or more of the creatures:
. . * Simian (ape or monkey) foamy virus (SFV); has not been shown to cause disease in humans but has been detected in other monkey-human interaction settings in Asia.
. . * Simian retrovirus (SRV); shown to infect humans in a laboratory setting but yet to be associated with any disease in humans.
. . * Simian T-cell lymphotropic virus (STLV); believed to be the primate ancestor of the human version of the virus, HTLV, a known cause of T-cell leukemia in people.
. . * Herpes B virus, also known as CHV-1; rarely infects humans but, in the 40 known human cases, associated with an 80% fatality rate.
Nov 30, 05: Three species of bats that are eaten by people in central Africa may be carriers of the Ebola virus that has killed hundreds of humans and great apes, scientists said today. [Bats are primates.]
. . Although the bats do not show any evidence of infection, the International Center for Medical Research in Franceville, Gabon discovered genetic evidence or an immune response in the animals, captured during outbreaks between 2001 and 2003. "We find evidence of asymptomatic infection by Ebola virus in three species of fruit bat."
. . Ebola haemorrhagic fever was first identified in 1976. The virus is transmitted by infected body fluids and kills up to 90% of victims, depending on the strain. There is no cure.
. . Each of the bat species that showed evidence of the virus had a geographical range that included regions where human outbreaks of Ebola had occurred. The researchers said the findings could help to reduce infections in both great apes and people. "Human infection directly from fruit bats might in part be countered by education, as these animals are eaten by local populations living in the outbreak regions."
Nov 21, 05: Almost 5 million people were infected by HIV globally in 2005, the highest jump since the first reported case in 1981 and taking the number living with the virus to a record 40.3 million, the United Nations said.
. . More than 3.1 million people have died this year from AIDS, including 570,000 children --far more than the toll from all natural disasters since last December's tsunami. Southern Africa, including South Africa --which has the world's most cases at more than 5.1 million-- continues to be worst-hit. Nine out of 10 people in developing countries do not know their HIV status.
. . In South Africa, the infection rate among pregnant women touched 29.5% in 2005. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 25.8 million HIV-positive people, or 64% of the world's total.
. . In Asia, a total of 1.2 million new cases since 2003 pushed total cases to 8.3 million, with conditions in countries such as Vietnam and Pakistan ripe for a rapid spread.
. . UNAIDS said the number of HIV-positive women reached 17.5 million this year, more than one million more than in 2003.
. . The outlook on accessibility of anti-retroviral drugs for people in developing nations is looking brighter, the U.N. said. "Because of recent treatment scale-up since the end of 2003, between 250,000 and 350,000 deaths were averted in 2005."
. . 70% of Indian sex workers either did not know what a condom was or how to use one. "If the situation remains unchanged, India could have an estimated 50 million HIV cases by 2025."
Influenza is an RNA virus, which is unsteady when it replicates. This results in frequent variation, or mutation, and finally one form will spread from person to person.
Nov 16, 05: Mothers who breast-feed their children may help to protect them from developing celiac disease, an intolerance to a protein found in wheat, rye and barley, scientists said. In a review of 15 studies, they found that the longer children are breast fed the less likely they are to suffer from the illness.
. . People who suffer from celiac disease have an intolerance to gluten and are unable to eat wheat, barley and rye products. It is a genetic disease in which the immune system damages the small intestine when gluten is eaten.
. . It cut their risk of suffering from the illness by 52% compared to other youngsters. The researchers said they are not sure how breast feeding protects a child from the illness.
Nov 3, 05: The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus thrives in the cooler months between October and March, matching the seasonal peak for common human influenza viruses.
. . One question is why influenza peaks at this time each year. Scientists suggest a plethora of likely explanations, from viruses surviving better in cooler and wetter environments to people crowding together in the festive season, creating the perfect setting for viruses to proliferate.
. . A team of scientists in Asia published a paper in Nature magazine last year saying that H5N1 viruses have been circulating in China since 2001 with a seasonal pattern, peaking from October to March when the average temperature is below 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees F). And the lower the temperature, the better it can survive. "When the temperature goes below 20 C, the isolation rate of (H5N1) goes up to 15% in waterbirds."
. . Avian viruses can survive for up to four days in water with temperatures around 22 C. At 0 Celsius, they can survive for more than 30 days. "They don't multiply outside the host, but through contamination of the soil, faeces, the virus should remain alive until it moves from one animal to another."
. . "The reason why flu infection is higher among chickens and ducks in winter is because we have many festivities. Farmers rear more for this season and the birds are packed closely together. It helps to propagate the virus."
. . Hampson said reduced ultraviolet (UV) light in winter might also explain why viruses thrive in the cold. UV light is capable of inactivating viruses and bacteria. "But I would think that UV light alone is not enough to explain the trouble. It could certainly be a contributing factor. Humidity, temperature, UV, all of these (decide) whether the virus can survive in the environment", Hampson said.
Nov 3, 05: British scientists are working to produce genetically modified chickens with resistance to all strains of bird flu. If successful, the experiment could lessen the threat of future outbreaks sparking widespread slaughter of flocks and even developing into a human pandemic.
. . Laurence Tiley, professor of molecular virology at Cambridge University, said it may be possible in about six years to replace the whole world chicken population of about 35 billion with flu-resistant birds. That would be too late to impact the current outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain.
. . There has been strong opposition to the use of GMOs in food crops, but the clear benefits in this case could help change public opinion.
Oct 25, 05: UN charity Unicef says 18 million children in sub-Saharan Africa could be orphaned by Aids by the end of 2010. It also says that every minute, a child is infected with HIV and another child dies from an Aids-related illness.
. . The charity says children are being overlooked in the global fight. Unicef says only 5% of HIV-positive children get medical help, and fewer than 10% of the 15 million already orphaned by Aids get financial support.
Oct 25, 05: Tucked away in a small corner of India's National Institute of Communicable Diseases are 100,000 mosquitoes, plague-hit rats, guinea worms and wild birds infected with Japanese Encephalitis.
. . Better known as the "Mosquito Museum", it is the oldest and largest such collection in South and Southeast Asia, formally set up in 1938 and still used in fighting killer disease outbreaks. Many of them have been responsible for millions of deaths across South-Southeast Asia.
. . Although many countries have similar collections, New Delhi's has some of the oldest specimens in the world, along with the Natural History Museum in London.
. . In the 1930s, malaria was killing a million people and infected another 75 million every year across the vast, impoverished Indian landscape. Between 1998 and 2004, encephalitis killed several hundred people a year. In the most recent outbreak, more than 900 people, mostly children, died of the brain fever in the densely populated state of Uttar Pradesh this year. In 1996, dengue killed 423 in New Delhi and infected 10,250.
. . Dengue and encephalitis are caused by viruses carried by mosquitoes, while malaria is caused by a tiny parasite called Plasmodium, of which there are four species that infect humans. The Plasmodium parasite uses mosquitoes and humans to complete its life-cycle. In people, the tiny parasite invades red-blood cells to reproduce, causing them to burst.
. . "Mosquitoes are also changing and adapting. Every species undergoes a change", he said. And that includes the mosquito that carries the malaria parasite. "The malaria mosquito we saw 100 years ago belonged to one species. We could not see the 4-5 separate species or siblings of the same mosquito which we can see today. They were hidden in layers and have now surfaced", he said.
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Sept 20, 05: The virus which causes Aids may be getting less powerful, researchers say. A team at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, compared HIV-1 samples from 1986-89 and 2002-03. They found the newer samples appeared not to multiply as well, and were more sensitive to drugs --some other studies argue they are becoming more resistant. They were only able to compare 12 samples from each time period, and they were unable fully to tease out any effect that drug therapy may have had on the virus.
. . Researcher Dr Eric Artz said: "This was a very preliminary study, but we did find a pretty striking observation in that the viruses from the 2000s are much weaker than the viruses from the eighties. "Obviously, this virus is still causing death, although it may be causing death at a slower rate of progression now. Maybe in another 50 to 60 years, we might see this virus not causing death."
. . Dr Marco Vitoria, an HIV expert at the World Health Organization, said other diseases --such as smallpox, TB and syphilis-- had shown the same tendency to weaken over time. "There is a natural trend to reach an 'equilibrium' between the agent and the host interests, in order to guarantee concomitant survival for a longer time. ... This kind of change cannot be adequately measured in years, but in generations."
Sept 21, 05: A top scientist warned today against misusing oseltamivir, the antiviral drug that governments are stockpiling to fight a possible human pandemic caused by the H5N1 birdflu, saying that could lead to resistance. Resistance to anti-flu drugs has risen by 12% worldwide in the past decade.
. . In some countries in Asia, such as China, drug resistance exceeded 70%, suggesting that drugs like amantadine and rimantadine will probably no longer be effective. By 2003, when the disease began spreading in parts of southeast Asia, amantadine was no longer as effective.
. . Guan said the prudent use of oseltamivir, which is known by its brand name Tamiflu, was of utmost importance if the world wanted to preserve it for a H5N1 pandemic.
. . "We have to be very careful right now. We don't want a lot of drug resistance for Tamiflu because if the pandemic comes, it may become useless ... we will then be completely disarmed. We will be finished, this is the concern", said Guan, who has been studying the H5N1 strain since 1997.
. . Some experts say another antiviral, zanamivir, may be effective in controlling H5N1.
Sept 21, 05: Asia must change age-old farming practices to reduce contact between people and poultry to limit bird flu and prevent new animal diseases infecting humans, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
. . In launching a five-year plan to combat emerging diseases in the Asia-Pacific region, WHO said on average one new disease had occurred every year for the past 20 years, mainly in Africa and Asia, and eventually one will become a pandemic. "Even if you control avian flu, the next one is coming. Unless we address this fast, we have to expect more emerging diseases, particularly the spread of disease from other animals to humans.
Sept 15, 05: Avian flu will mutate and become transmissible by humans and the world has no time to lose to stop it becoming a pandemic, the head of the U.N. World Health Organization said. "When the pandemic starts, it is simply too late."
Sept 10, 05: In a dank, poultry wholesale market in Guangzhou in southern China, a woman in the next stall selling ducks chomped on an apple while five bare-chested men sat down to lunch. All around the humans are cages of live chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, goats, pigeons and pheasants --the perfect setting for the H5N1 bird flu virus to mix with other viruses or mutate into what experts predict would be the next pandemic strain.
. . Once the hybrid is easily transmissible among people --which experts say will ultimately happen as the virus changes-- they predict more than 25 million hospital admissions and up to 7 million deaths globally within a short period. At least two of the three pandemics in the last century originated in southern China. And it seems more than a coincidence that the H5N1 made its first known jump to humans in 1997 in Hong Kong, which lies in southern China.
. . So why is this region such a hotbed for new deadly bugs? Waterfowl -- particularly ducks which are reared in large numbers in this region, pigs and the fact that poultry, pigs and humans are present in very large numbers and in very close proximity to each other in this region. Not just China but southeast Asia.
. . "In places where you have pigs, birds and humans living close to each other, they create the ecology for the emergence of new strains. In southern China, you can easily see them keeping chickens, water birds very close to pigs and humans. This environment makes gene reassortment more likely", said Paul Chan, a microbiologist at the Chinese University.
. . Gene reassortment is the closest things viruses have to sex. They can swap genes with other viruses, often allowing them to acquire vastly new abilities overnight. It is a faster way to change than simple mutation --which could also lead to a new H5N1 strain deadlier to people. The H5N1 strain has haunted the world since it made its debut in humans in 1997. It is now endemic in parts of Asia, where it has killed more than 60 people since late 2003.
. . Chan said the threat of a pandemic has become infinitely larger with the involvement of migratory birds. Margaret Chan, responsible for helping defend the world against an influenza pandemic that could kill millions, says an outbreak of bird flu among humans may be imminent, but there is still time to act. "We have a window of opportunity to prevent a pandemic or at least delay the spread of a pandemic."
Sept 8, 05: Bats found in Hong Kong carry a virus very similar to the severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS virus and might be able to spread it, Chinese researchers reported. They said the horseshoe bats, valued both as food and for their use in Chinese medicine, should be handled with great care. They may have helped spread the virus among different species of animals.
. . They found a coronavirus similar to SARS in nearly 40% of wild Chinese horseshoe bats they examined. Genetic analysis of the bat SARS virus showed it was closely related to the human SARS coronavirus. The researchers could not determine how the bats were originally infected or whether bats were responsible for transmitting the SARS coronavirus to other mammals including the civets.
Sept 8, 05: UK scientists have won permission to create a human embryo that will have genetic material from two mothers. The Newcastle University team will transfer genetic material created when an egg and sperm fuse into another woman's egg.
. . The groundbreaking work aims to prevent mothers from passing certain genetic diseases on to their unborn babies. Such diseases arise from DNA found outside the nucleus, and thus inherited separately from DNA in the nucleus. If this DNA is faulty, a mitochondrial diseases occurs. At present, no treatment for mitochondrial diseases exists.
. . Studies in mice show it is possible to prevent the transmission of mitochondrial disease by moving the pronuclei --the genetic material which will go on to form a nucleus-- from a fertilized egg containing bad mitochondria and putting it into another fertilized egg which only contains good mitochondria.
. . The resulting egg would never be allowed to develop into a baby. But even if it did, the offspring would still resemble their mother and father because the mitochondrial DNA does not dictate things like hair coor.
. . The researchers stress that this research is only the very first step in a very difficult process, which they hope will lead to techniques that might prevent the transmission of mitochondrial DNA disease. About one in 5,000 children and adults are at risk of developing a mitochondrial disease.
. . The group of conditions Professor Turnbull's team will look at is called mitochondrial myopathy. These cause muscle weakness and wasting, making it difficult for those who have it to move normally --some may need to use a wheelchair.
Sept 7, 05: The world is going to face a pandemic of the bird flu strain lethal to humans and Thailand is the only nation in South and Southeast Asia ready to deal with it, the World Health Organization warned. WHO officials said the virus could mutate into a form that could pass easily from one human to another, making it easier for it to spread rapidly across great distances and kill between one million and seven million people worldwide. "We may be at almost the last stage before the pandemic virus may emerge."
Sept 1, 05: Seven people have died of dengue fever in Singapore this year and the number of new cases in the city-state hit a new high last week despite government efforts to clear out mosquito breeding grounds. 493 new dengue cases were reported in the week ending August 28, up nearly a fifth from the previous week's record high of 414.
. . The government says there have been 8,308 dengue fever cases since the start of the year --nearly double the number infected in the same period last year when the number of cases on the island rocketed to a 10-year high.
. . Dengue is carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the virus that causes the fever. The virus can cause fever, severe headache, joint and muscular pains, vomitting and rashes.
South Africa has more people with HIV/AIDS than any other country, with 11% of its 45 million population infected. Swaziland [in S Africa]: about 40% of the 1 million population are infected with HIV.
Sept 2, 05: Mad cow disease may have originated from animal feed contaminated with human remains washed ashore after being floated downriver in Indian funerals, British scientists said. The cause of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which infected an estimated 2 million cattle during an epidemic in Britain, is unknown. It is thought to have resulted from cattle being fed material containing remains of sheep infected with scrapie.
. . But Professor Alan Colchester of the University of Kent in England says it may have been caused by the tons of animal bones and other tissue imported from India for animal feed which also may have contained the remains of humans infected with
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
. . Colchester and his daughter say they doubt BSE resulted from scrapie because material infected with the disease has been fed to cattle for many decades without any sign of BSE arising.
Sept 1, 05: Some of the great apes --chimps/bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans-- could be extinct in the wild within a human generation, a new assessment concludes. Human settlement, logging, mining and disease mean that orangutans in parts of Indonesia may lose half of their habitat within five years. There are now more than 20,000 humans on the planet for every chimpanzee.
. . The World Atlas of Great Apes and their Conservation is published by the UN's environment and biodiversity agencies.
. . Why ebola is now taking its toll of apes is not clear, but may be connected with forest clearance. One theory is that the as yet unidentified animal which harbors the virus lives on the edges of forests; logging creates more edges, and so enhances the transmission of ebola.
Aug 28, 05: One of the biggest hurdles in fighting ailments such as mad cow disease and its human version has been the lack of a way to diagnose the illness. A new process may point the way to a useful blood test.
. . Transfusions can spread the disease among people, but there is no practical test to detect it. That is why blood donors are carefully screened to weed out people who have lived or visited in certain areas where they might have become infected. Until now, dissecting the brains of victims has offered the only way to detect such brain-wasting diseases in humans.
. . These diseases are caused by agents called prions. They have developed a method of multiplying the number prions in a blood sample so a blood test then can detect them. Such a test could help prevent the spread of the disease through transfusions and could detect the illness in people or animals before it can be spread to others.
Aug 22, 05: Swedish researchers said they had identified a previously unknown virus that may cause many cases of serious respiratory infections in children. They named the virus human bocavirus and suggested the researchers start a systematic search for all the viruses that cause respiratory infections. The report underlines how little doctors know about the sources of most respiratory infections.
. . A separate team of California researchers found they could only identify about 40% of viruses infecting patients, and both teams said rapid testing for viruses would be useful in diagnosing and treating respiratory illnesses. Health experts say this step was particularly important because there are fears that influenza, in particular avian influenza, could cause a global pandemic. Being able to test quickly to find out what is making someone sick can mean the difference between life and death because antiviral medications must be given early on to prevent serious illness in the case of influenza.
. . In their sample of 540 children in a pediatric hospital ward, the new bocavirus was responsible for 17 of the cases, the Swedish researchers found. "The most important viral agent in this group of patients is respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Other important agents are influenza viruses, parainfluenza viruses, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, and human metapneumovirus." But the causes of between 12% and 39% of these serious infections are never identified, the researchers said.
Aug 22, 05: An experimental treatment approach called RNA interference reduced the severity of SARS infections in monkeys, U.S. researchers reported. A tiny Maryland-based biotech company, less than a year old, said monkeys infected with SARS either before or after treatment became less ill than untreated monkeys. They believe their approach helps prevent the virus from infecting cells and perhaps also from spreading from cell to cell.
. . Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, caused by a never-before-seen virus now named the SARS coronavirus, swept China's Guangdong province and then spread globally in 2003. It infected more than 8,000 people and killed around 800 by causing pneumonia and lung failure. It was contained using quarantine and isolation. But experts fear another outbreak could come at any time and companies are working on vaccines to prevent it and drugs to treat it.
. . They developed two siRNAs (small interfering RNAs), as they are called, to counteract two key genes in the SARS virus known as Spike and ORF1b23. These are short stretches of RNA --the genetic counterpart of DNA that actually functions in cells-- specifically designed to interfere with certain genes.
Aug 16, 05: Scientists in Australia's tropical north are collecting blood from crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antibiotic for humans, after tests showed that the reptile's immune system kills the HIV virus. The crocodile's immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights which often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs.
. . Initial studies of the crocodile immune system in 1998 found that several proteins (antibodies) in the reptile's blood killed bacteria that were resistant to penicillin, such as Staphylococcus aureus or golden staph. "If you take a test tube of HIV and add crocodile serum it will have a greater effect than human serum. It can kill a much greater number of HIV viral organisms."
. . Britton said the crocodile immune system worked differently from the human system. "The crocodile has an immune system which attaches to bacteria and tears it apart and it explodes."
. . The scientists hope to collect enough crocodile blood to isolate the powerful antibodies and eventually develop an antibiotic for use by humans. However, the crocodile's immune system may be too powerful for humans and may need to be synthesized for human consumption. "There is a lot of work to be done. It may take years before we can get to the stage where we have something to market."
Aug 15, 05: A new treatment strategy has shown promise in helping to transform HIV into a curable infection. Preliminary research published this week in The Lancet medical journal outlines how scientists used an anti-convulsant drug to awaken dormant HIV hiding in the body, where it is temporarily invisible but still dangerous.
. . HIV infection is incurable because current drugs only work when the virus is multiplying, which occurs only when it is in an active cell. However, HIV sometimes infects dormant cells, and when it does, it becomes dormant itself.
. . While the virus poses no threat in its resting state, the sleeping cells sporadically wake up, reactivating the virus and causing it to multiply. Patients must continue to take medications for the rest of their lives so they can fight the virus when it comes out of the reawakened cells. Only if every last infected dormant cell is wiped out --or the virus purged from these cells-- can patients stop taking medication and be virus-free, experts say.
. . The latest drug, valproic acid, shows more promise. "The idea, if we could ever do it, is to purge every latently infected cell. Treat patients for probably two or three years, they'd be able to come off their antiretroviral therapy and they'd be virus-free."
. . Four patients on standard therapy were given the pills to take twice daily for three months. The size of this pool of infected dormant cells decreased by 75 percent in three out of the four patients, the study found. "This finding, though not definitive, suggests that new approaches will allow the cure of HIV in the future", Margolis said.
. . However, other experts were less optimistic. Siliciano said "It's got to be a 99.9999% reduction to be useful. When you stop the drugs the virus explodes back so quickly, even if you had one latently infected cell left, in a matter of days you would be back to where you started from."
Aug 8, 05: A new biochip developed in Singapore can halve the time and cost of diagnosing the deadly, mosquito-born Dengue fever, according to the chip's designer.
Clinical tests showed that the chip, roughly the size of a coin, is able to detect the dengue virus using a process called molecular diagnostics. The process takes 2-3 days, down from 6-7 days using traditional methods of detection, which rely heavily on a doctor's subjective assessment and experience.
. . "The chips will cost hospitals half of what conventional testing equipment cost." The chip could potentially be used to test for other diseases, the firm said, such as bird-flu, SARS, and sexually transmitted diseases.
Aug 8, 05: Screening blood donations for the West Nile virus to prevent its spread has proved remarkably effective, though a few contaminated units have been missed, according to reports on the first two years of testing.
. . The nation's blood supply has been screened for West Nile virus since the summer of 2003, after it became apparent that the mosquito-borne illness could be passed on through transfusions. Since then, West Nile infections have been found in 1,039 of the 27 million blood donations screened.
Aug 5, 05: Scientists looking for easier and less-controversial alternatives to stem cells from human embryos said they found a potential source in placentas saved during childbirth.
. . They described primitive cells found in a part of the placenta called the amnion, which they coaxed into forming a variety of cell types and which look very similar to sought-after embryonic stem cells. With 4 million children born in the United States each year, placentas could provide a ready source of the cells.
July 29, 05: A strain of bird flu harmful to humans has been found in an outbreak of the disease in Siberia. Bird flu is split into strains such as H5 and H7, which in turn have nine different subtypes. H5N1 subtype is highly pathogenic and can be passed from birds to humans, although there have been no known cases of human-human transmission.
. . More than 50 people have died in Asia from H5N1 since late 2003, raising fears it could mutate and form the basis of a new global epidemic.
July 29, 05: The beloved American robin, not the annoying, raucous crow, may be the more potent source for West Nile virus, according to new research. A DNA analysis of blood taken from the abdomens of 300 mosquitoes trapped in Connecticut over the past three years found that 40% fed on the blood of the red-breasted songbird and only 1% on crows.
. . The results are similar to the studies of Charles Apperson, an entomologist at North Carolina State University. He also found robin blood, but little from crows, in mosquitoes he has tested over a four-year period in New York, New Jersey and Tennessee. Andreadis said the next step in research would be to catch robins in special mist nets and test their blood. The non-lethal tests would tell researchers if the birds are an effective reservoir for the disease. "It's got to be there in high levels for along period of time." But testing the theory may be tough. Robins are wily in avoiding the nets.
. . West Nile virus has been identified in more than 200 species of birds. Fewer crows are dying off, leading researchers to believe they may be developing an immunity.
July 26, 05: Circumcising men can help protect them from the AIDS virus, researchers said. The circumcised men were 65% less likely to become infected. This has been especially noticeable in some parts of Africa, where some groups are routinely circumcised while neighboring groups are not. Two more studies underway in Uganda and Kenya will provide more evidence.
. . Researchers believe circumcision helps to cut infection risk because the foreskin is covered [inside?] in cells that the virus seems able to easily infect. The virus may also survive better in a warm, wet environment like that found beneath a foreskin.
July 25, 05: Strains of the influenza virus are constantly swapping genes among themselves and giving rise to new, dangerous strains at a rate faster than previously believed, U.S. researchers reported. Influenza viruses are notorious for trading genes back and forth and mutating. Scientists previously believed that the gene swapping occurred gradually but the new study shows that several genes can be exchanged at once, causing sudden changes in important characteristics of the virus.
. . This is why a new flu epidemic sweeps the world every year, killing between 250,000 and 500,000 globally and 36,000 people in the US alone every year. Each year, experts must predict which strains will be most common and design a new vaccine to fight them. Some years, such as in 2003-2004, the vaccine does not include the most common strain. This suggests that scientists need to study circulating flu viruses more carefully because important mutations can occur suddenly and without warning.
. . The H5N1 avian flu virus, which arrived in Asia in late 2003, has so far killed more than 50 people in the region including Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. It does not easily pass from person to person, yet but health officials say it can acquire this ability at any time and if it does, it could kill millions.
. . A second study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that an early wave of the 1918 "Spanish Flu" pandemic may have hit New York City several months before a big epidemic exploded globally. The 1918-1919 pandemic was the worst in recorded history, killing as many as 40 million people.
July 18, 05: The bird flu virus that experts fear will jump from birds to humans seems to be mutating yet again, and may be able to hide in healthy-looking ducks, thus putting both other birds and people at risk, experts said. "There is a real possibility that if these H5N1 viruses continue to circulate, further human infection will occur, increasing the potential for human-to-human transmission." Public health experts say the avian flu virus is mutating, and fear it could develop the ability to spread easily from person to person and kill millions in a flu pandemic.
. . Earlier this month, researchers reported that H5N1 was infecting and killing wild geese in a Chinese park -- wild geese that migrate as far afield as Siberia and New Zealand.
July 11, 05: Chronic wasting disease has been in the U.S. deer herd for at least the past 30 years. Questions about why it got there and how it spreads have been around for just as long.
. . Researchers are still trying to pinpoint the cause of the disease, which is in the same family as mad cow disease and the sheep disease scrapie. Scientists believe it is caused by misshapen proteins, called prions, found in the brain and nerve tissue. The illness attacks the nervous system, causing the animals to grow thin and die. For years, it was believed to be confined to parts of Colorado and Wyoming but has since appeared in states as far south as New Mexico and as far north as Canada.
. . Experts say there is no scientific evidence that CWD can infect humans, but the World Health Organization advises people not to eat any part of a deer with evidence of the disease.
July 6, 05: The deadly Nipah virus, which devastated Malaysian swine herds in 1999, uses a protein key to the development of embryos to get into the cells it infects, two teams of U.S. scientists reported. They hope to use their findings to find a way to defend against the virus, which is not only dangerous to livestock but which is considered a potential biological weapon. More than 100 people died and 1 million pigs were culled in 1999 because of an outbreak of Nipah, a never-before-seen virus eventually traced to fruit bats. The Nipah virus is a member of a new genus of viruses related to the mysterious Hendra virus, which infected horses and killed two people in Australia in 1994.
. . "Now that we understand how the virus operates, we can develop vaccines and drugs to block Nipah from entering the cells. This will help prevent infection and halt outbreaks before they reach epidemic proportions."
. . They found how the virus infects cells. It attaches to a cell receptor, a kind of chemical doorway, called Ephrin-B2. Ephrin-B2 is found on brain cells and cells lining the blood vessels. It is important in nervous system development and the growth of blood vessels in human and animal embryos.
. . The UCLA team and collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania spliced a harmless virus with Nipah virus proteins. It infected cells vulnerable to the Nipah virus, but could not infect Nipah-resistant cells that lacked the Ephrin-B2 receptor.
July 6, 05: The spread of avian flu virus among migrating geese and other birds at a wildlife refuge in China means the birds could carry the devastating virus out of Asia, scientists reported. At least 1,000 dead birds have been found at Lake Qinghaihu, a protected nature reserve in western China, according to two separate reports. United Nations scientists said last week the number had topped 5,000. "The occurrence of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus infection in migrant waterfowl indicates that this virus has the potential to be a global threat."
. . The World Health Organization has said the virus would kill millions of people worldwide if it acquires the ability to pass easily from human to human. So far it has not, but influenza is extremely mutation-prone.
. . The virus, which affects ducks with little harm but which kills chickens, had not before been seen to transmit among wild birds.
July 6, 05: Scientists are closing in on techniques that could let them safely repair almost any defective gene in a patient, opening the door for the first time to treatments for a range of genetic disorders that are now considered incurable.
. . The breakthrough, announced in the journal Nature in June, relies on so-called zinc fingers, named after wispy amino acid protuberances that emanate from a single zinc ion. When inserted into human cells, the fingers automatically bind to miscoded strands of DNA, spurring the body's innate repair mechanism to recode the problem area with the correct gene sequence. "It actually deletes the miscoded portion and fixes the problem."
. . At the heart of the breakthrough is the concept of "if it's broke, break it some more." Cells have a method of DNA repair called homologous recombination, which fixes breaks in the double helix of our chromosomes. But the process only repairs places where the DNA has been cut, not where genes have been miscoded.
. . Using a package of synthesized zinc fingers, cells can be tricked into doing nano-surgery on their own genes, Sangamo researchers found. The zinc fingers home in like a guided missile on the exact spot in the genome doctors are trying to target and then bind to it. DNA-devouring enzymes then cut through the double helix of DNA at the exact beginning and end of the targeted gene, and a template of donor DNA helps rebuild the deleted strand.
. . While such a therapy has been theorized for years by Baltimore and others, Sangamo scientists are the first to show test-tube results with human cells. In a paper published June 2, Sangamo researchers showed how they were able to correct the defective gene in 18% of the T-cells extracted from the body of an X-linked SCID patient. () That should be enough to cure the disease, as it only takes one corrected T-cell to repopulate a person's immune system with healthy cells, according to Sangamo.
. . His technology overcomes a previous problem --it often caused leucemia. Whereas the French viruses inserted the foreign gene randomly into the host cell's genome, the zinc fingers are highly specific and can land only at the targeted gene.
July 4, 05: Scientists meeting in Malaysia have warned the world has reached a tipping point in the fight against bird flu. They are calling on rich nations to put resources into countries fighting the disease, or risk a global flu pandemic. But some delegates say the fight against bird flu is being hampered by secrecy in some affected countries. They say they are worried by a lack of information from Laos and Burma, while others called on China to be more open about the situation there.
. . The World Health Organization (WHO) wants a strategy to prevent viruses leaping from animals to humans, and creating a hybrid flu germ. Scientists insist that bird flu can still be prevented from turning into a virus that spreads among people. But press them a little and it is clear that they are desperately worried the battle is being lost. Without funding and resources from the West, it says they have not got a hope.
June 27, 05: A genetically engineered virus may offer the first effective vaccine against Lassa fever, a sometimes deadly hemorrhagic fever common in West Africa, U.S. and Canadian scientists said. The vaccine successfully protected four monkeys against Lassa.
. . Lassa is a hemorrhagic virus like Ebola, Marburg and yellow fever but is far less likely to be fatal. It is, however, far more common than Ebola or Marburg. Lassa fever is mild in about 80% of cases but it can cause epidemics of severe disease. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 300,000 people are infected in West Africa each year --it sometimes causes high fever, internal bleeding-- and 5,000 people die of it.
. . There are rival vaccines against Lassa in development. Peregrine Pharmaceuticals Inc. is working on an antibody-based drug called Tarvacin to attack "enveloped" viruses such as Lassa, the AIDS virus, hepatitis B and C, West Nile and SARS.
June 25, 05: Researchers have isolated stem cells from human skin and coaxed them into becoming fat, muscle and bone cells. "Because these cells are taken from a patient's own skin, there would not be problems with organ or tissue rejection." The researchers grew mesenchymal stem cells, a type normally found in bone marrow.
In theory, microbicides could protect women from HIV over a period of days, or could be applied after sex as a kind of "morning after pill" to prevent infection.
June 14, 05: More than a million Americans are believed to be living with the virus that causes AIDS, the government said in a report that reflects both a victory and a failure at combatting the disease. While better medicines are keeping more people with HIV alive, government health officials have failed to "break the back" of the AIDS epidemic by their stated goal of 2005. The number in the mid-1980s was probably around 1.2 million, experts believe.
. . Health officials say the prevention failure in part has come from an abandonment of safe sex practices by gay and bisexual men —-who account for almost half of HIV cases. Experts think they may be weary of STD prevention messages. The majority of the others infected are high-risk heterosexuals and injection drug users.
. . In 2003, the rates of AIDS cases were 58 per 100,000 in the black population, 10 per 100,000 Hispanics, 6 per 100,000 whites, 8 per 100,000 American Indian/Alaska native population, and 4 per 100,000 Asian/Pacific Islanders.
June 13, 05: More needs to be done to prevent imported animals spreading diseases to humans and wildlife in Britain, says the Zoological Society of London. Its report says a national monitoring agency should be set up to detect diseases more quickly and to help prevent them from spreading.
. . Around 75% of emerging diseases in humans come from animals, including Aids, Bird Flu and West Nile Virus. English examples include the decline of red squirrels due to the parapox virus, the death of hundreds of thousands of native frogs due to ranavirus, and the near extinction of crayfish due to fungal disease. The poison arrow frog carries an infection that kills European frog species.
June 11, 05: Microbicides, which women might one day be able to use in gel or cream form to shield themselves from HIV infection, hold some of the best promise for fighting a disease which continues to defy efforts to create a vaccine. Microbicides can be used completely surreptitiously, it does not need a partner's consent", he said.
. . U.N. estimates show 60% of almost 30 million people with HIV or AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are women, a proportion growing particularly in societies where women are less able to refuse sex or negotiate condom use with a male partner.
. . Microbicides, which use a variety of means to either kill the HIV virus in the vagina, block it from infecting other cells or prevent it from multiplying, could be an important tool and advanced studies are under way in South Africa and elsewhere.
June 11, 05: State officials are investigating an outbreak of a rare, rapidly spreading disease that killed about 100 rabbits on a southwest Indiana farm. The rabbit deaths mark the first recorded diagnosis in Indiana of rabbit hemorrhagic disease, a virus that causes death in about 90 percent of infected animals, said Denise Derrer, spokeswoman for the Indiana State Board of Animal Health.
. . In late May, a Vanderburgh County farmer, who raises rabbits to sell as pets and food for large snakes, noticed that about eight of his 200 rabbits had died. Over the next two weeks, 100 more died. The remaining rabbits were euthanized, and the carcasses were burned to reduce the chance of spreading the virus. The disease is not known to harm humans, other animals or wild rabbit species. [However, we really, really want it not to jump species, as a virus will eventually do.]
. . The disease is spread through contact with an infected rabbit, urine, feces and rabbit products, such as bedding, cages and feed.
June 8, 05: Chimpanzees may hold vital clues for mankind's war against the
AIDS virus, but the apes could be wiped out before they reveal their secrets, a leading genetic expert warned --Paul Sharp of Britain's University of Nottingham.
. . Chimpanzee populations are infected with viruses which closely resemble the
HIV-1 strain of the AIDS virus which is most common among humans. Unlike humans, however, chimps do not progress to full-blown AIDS, an intriguing mystery.
. . Some researchers fear Africa's chimpanzees could be wiped out in about 50 years --even earlier for certain species-- because they are hunted for meat and threatened by deforestation and disease. One U.N. study last year said that less than 10% of the forest home of Africa's great apes will be left relatively undisturbed by 2030 if road building, construction of mining camps and other developments continue at current levels.
. . He said it was now believed that either the virus evolved to become less deadly, a scenario he described as unlikely given the long incubation period, or that chimpanzees themselves developed physical strategies for disarming the virus or holding off its impact on their immune systems. He said this natural coping mechanism may already be starting in some human populations, noting that studies have found isolated but as-yet unexplained instances of individuals where HIV infection does not progress at the same rate as seen in broader samples.
. . Sharp added that the latest research on the genetic history of the HIV virus confirmed that it most likely first spread to humans in West Africa --possibly in Cameroon-- as early as the 1930s, although initial cases were so rare that it took decades to establish the true threat posed by the disease. The virus likely got its first major beachhead in a human population, what viral scientists term the "founder event", some decades later as it arrived in a major urban area, most likely teeming Kinshasa in Democratic Republic of Congo, he said.
. . But research into HIV history also reveals the astonishing complexity of the virus and its ability to mutate and recombine with other strains -- continually producing "new and improved" versions that outpace mankind's efforts at treatment, he said. "What we know about how the virus evolves is not very good news for therapies and vaccines ... it is going to be very difficult", Sharp said.
June 6, 05: Mosquitoes appear to get infected with West Nile virus more quickly than previously thought, according to a new study that also discovered mammals can transmit the deadly agent. West Nile, which killed 88 people in the United States last year and more in previous years, is typically thought to be transmitted by birds. Infected mosquitoes can in turn pass the virus to humans.
. . It had been believed that once an infected mosquito bit a bird, the virus needed about a week to build up in the bird before another mosquito could be infected by biting the same bird. The new study shows West Nile can infect a new mosquito within an hour after entering an avian host.
. . Higgs and his colleagues were also surprised to find that mammals can transmit the virus. Scientists previously thought mammals could harbor and die from the virus but not pass it on. "Mammal vertebrates had been considered a dead-end", Higgs said. "Each year, lots of horses die [of West Nile virus] but they are also bitten by many uninfected mosquitoes. Now we know that they may be passing the virus along."
. . In 2002, 4,156 human cases and 284 deaths were reported in the United States. A peak of 9,862 cases were reported in 2003, and last year the number dropped to 2,470 cases and 88 deaths. Nearly 80% of people infected with West Nile virus show no symptoms at all. Among the other 20%, symptoms can include high fever, headache, neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, vision loss, numbness and paralysis. These symptoms may last several weeks, and neurological effects can be permanent.
June 6, 05: Canadian and U.S. scientists have developed vaccines that protect monkeys from the deadly Marburg and Ebola viruses and show promise for humans. It will take five or six years to complete the research to show the experimental vaccines can be safe and effective for people exposed to the contagious viruses, which are almost always fatal. "The data would suggest that instead of 100 percent chance of dying, they would have an 80 percent chance of survival."
. . There is no vaccine or treatment other than drugs to relieve pain.
. . It is a live vaccine that grows inside the recipient for a short period of time, generating a rapid and strong immune response. Trials demonstrated protection in 28 days, but speculated the vaccines could work in half that time.
. . The research has been funded by the Canadian government and U.S. military, which want vaccines in case of a domestic outbreak or a biological attack by terrorists.
June 2, 05: Government scientists have found an important clue to how rogue proteins that cause mad cow disease and its cousins destroy the brain: These mysterious substances must latch on to the outside of cell membranes to be toxic."Clues are really hard to come by" in prion diseases. If scientists could break the fatty Velcro-like bond that anchors these so-called prions, they might devise a treatment for the deadly illnesses, research suggests.
. . Related diseases —-including mad cow, scrapie in sheep and the human
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease-— are believed to arise when a protein the body normally harbors folds into an abnormal shape, called a prion, and sets off a chain reaction of misfolds. When enough abnormal prions accumulate, they deposit plaque on the brain and eventually leave clumps of dead brain cells. Those are the diseases' hallmark spongy holes.
. . To study how prions function, Chesebro and colleagues genetically engineered mice that lacked the fatty anchor that usually binds prions to the surface of cells. Then the scientists injected the transgenic mice and regular mice with scrapie-causing prions.
. . All 70 of the regular mice promptly got sick. But the 128 specially bred mice showed no symptoms of scrapie even though Chesebro watched for up to 600 days --nothing. Under a microscope, their brains show lots of the telltale plaques. But their brain cells had not died.
May 25, 05: Researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have discovered that the more pesticides gardeners are exposed to, the more likely they are to develop Parkinson's disease. They found that people with the illness were more likely to have used pesticides. Amateur gardeners were 9% more likely to suffer from the disease than non-pesticide users. Farmers were 43% more likely.
. . The researchers also identified other risk factors for the illness, including being knocked unconscious. They said having a family history of the disease raised the risk by 350%.
. . Parkinson's is a chronic, irreversible disease that affects 1% of people over the age of 65 worldwide. Actor Michael J Fox and boxing legend Mohammed Ali are sufferers.
. . The illness occurs when brain cells that produce a chemical called dopamine malfunction and die. Symptoms include tremors, stiffness, slow movement and poor coordination and balance.
May 25, 05: It could infect 20% of the world's population, kill many millions and create an economic crisis --but scientists say not enough is being done to combat a bird flu virus that could trigger a global pandemic. Global health officials fear it could mutate into a lethal strain that could rival the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 and 40 million people. "Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic."
. . Scientists believe the next pandemic, which many believe is overdue, will probably originate in poultry in Asia. To become a pandemic strain, H5N1 will have to adapt sufficiently on its own, or mix its genetic material with a human virus to become highly infectious in humans, who have no protection against it.
. . A task force, which would consist of specialists in human and animal diseases, as well as pathologists, ecologists and agricultural experts, would cost less than $1.5 million a year.
. . Developing countries are now stockpiling Roche's antiviral drug Tamiflu against the threat of an human flu pandemic. The drug made by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant will be the first line of defense while scientists prepare an effective vaccine, which could take months to develop. Although Roche has quadrupled its production capacity for the drug, experts believe global stockpiles will not be enough if a pandemic develops. The drug will not prevent a pandemic but it can reduce the duration of flu symptoms.
. . So far, about 50 countries have drawn up plans to deal with a pandemic but only a few are in Asia --where it is likely to start.
May 17, 05: Two new viruses from the same family as HIV have been discovered in central Africans who hunt nonhuman primates. The research team collected and examined blood samples from more than 900 people living throughout Cameroon. They say their work proves it is not unusual for potentially dangerous viruses to jump from other primates to man. They say it is important to monitor disease in bushmeat hunters closely, as any virus they contract from animals may spread to the community at large.
. . They have been named Human T-lymphotropic Virus types 3 and 4 (HTLV-3 and HTLV-4). Humans have previously been infected by HTLV-1 and HTLV-2. In most cases, infection does not produce symptoms, but it can trigger neurological problems, and even leukemia. "The discoveries of HTLV-3 and HTLV-4 show that, far from being rare events, retroviruses are actively crossing into human populations."
. . All the individuals studied reported some exposure to blood and body fluids of nonhuman primates, contact mostly due to hunting and butchering of bushmeat, and in some cases to keeping primates as pets. Analysis of the blood samples showed that various simian (ape) viruses had infected the participants. The two previously unknown viruses were found in two bushmeat hunters. The same team discovered another primate retrovirus - the simian foamy virus (SFV) - in bushmeat hunters last year.
. . HTLV-3 is similar to a simian virus called STLV-3, and was most likely contracted through direct contact with a primate during hunting. HTLV-4 does not have a known primate counterpart, making its origin less clear. The researchers believe it could have arisen through cross-species transmission from an animal carrying an unknown form of STLV.
. . At this stage, it is unclear whether either of the two newly discovered viruses or SFV are harmful to humans, or can be transferred from person to person. However, the researchers say their work clearly shows that hunting provides the opportunity for viruses to jump the species barrier. "If cross-species transmission is such a frequent event, then all it takes is for one virus to really take hold in somebody, and be passed on to others for it to take off in humans."
May 4, 05: Indonesian authorities have confirmed a second case of polio, a day after announcing they had discovered the first case for almost 10 years. They were confident they could prevent a major outbreak. Indonesia has begun a programme of vaccinating millions of children in the West Java region. Polio is a waterborne disease which usually infects young children by attacking the nervous system. It causes paralysis and muscular atrophy, and there is no cure.
Apr 14, 05: Angolans are being urged to change their traditional rituals for burying loved ones in a bid by health workers to stamp out the deadly Marburg virus. At least 215 people --mainly in the northern province-- have died from the Ebola-like bug since October. Angolans traditionally embrace and kiss their dead in a final farewell --but just touching an infected corpse can lead to infection, say experts.
Apr 12, 05: The results of the first investigative survey revealed that tens of thousands of Tasmanian devils had died from a disease now known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease. "The maximum population estimate [before the disease struck] was between 130,000 and 150,000. So from that, we believe we've lost up to 75,000."
. . Small and furry, the carnivores are known for their unearthly howl and cranky temperament. They are also well loved as a species unique to Tasmania, an island outpost calved from mainland Australia.
. . Devil Facial Tumor Disease causes cancers to appear first in and around the mouth before spreading down the neck and, sometimes, into the rest of the body. The animals can die within six months of the appearance of the first sores, and in some areas whole populations have been wiped out within 18 months.
. . A special Tasmanian devil-dedicated laboratory has been set up in the northern town of Launceston, where scientists are desperately trying to work out what causes the disease and how it is transmitted. To stop infected animals from moving in, trapping lines are being set in the north of Tasmania, an area that so far appears to be disease free. On mainland Australia, wildlife sanctuaries and zoos are being contacted about the possibility of establishing reserve populations of Tasmanian devils.
Apr 1, 05: An outbreak of rare and deadly Marburg hemorrhagic fever has claimed more than 100 lives in central Africa. Marburg is a rare and deadly virus, of the same family as Ebola, that triggers haemorrhagic fever. It infects the cells lining the blood vessels and a subset of the body's immune cells, causing capillaries to leak fluid. The first signs of infection are fever and aches, making the disease difficult to distinguish from malaria or other viral illnesses. Although Marburg can cause severe bleeding, in most cases patients die because the circulatory system collapses, triggering shock and multiple organ failure.
. . Marburg is dangerous because it has a high mortality rate, is very contagious and has no effective treatment. The virus kills at least 25-30% of the people it infects, although its deadlier cousin Ebola kills up to 90%.
. . The current outbreak, which originated in northern Angola, has killed more people than any before. The disease first appeared there in October 2004 but was only identified as Marburg virus last week. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health authorities had reported 132 cases as of 30 March, of which 127 have been fatal. The virus has also attracted attention in recent years because it is viewed as a prime candidate for a bioterror agent: it is easy to mass-produce and is stable as a powder.
. . Scientists have no clear idea about where the virus originated. It is unlikely to stem from monkeys or other primates, because they are also killed quickly by the disease. Scientists suspect that it lives in another animal, which could be anything from bats to mosquitoes to birds, and occasionally jumps into humans and other primates.
. . There are no vaccines or drugs that fight off Marburg fever. The virus spreads through close contact with infected people, their body fluids or the tiny water droplets from coughs and sneezes. But its spread can be curbed using standard infection-control measures, such as the use of gloves and face masks, and the isolation of those infected.
Mar 4, 05: A new theory is that avian flu genes are swapping pieces in a predictable way. This gene reorganization is called recombination, something that most scientists agree happens during certain biological events, but not in the flu virus. They believe instead that viruses swap whole genes only, a process called re-assortment. "Normally in the influenza virus, because it has a segmented genome, new variants are created by re-assortment and not by recombination", said Dr. Erich Hoffmann.
. . The avian flu that has led to the death of more than 100 million birds and at least 42 humans --about three-quarters of those infected-- is known as H5N1. It contains eight genes, and the fear is that it will reassemble, swapping one of its bird-infecting genes for a human-infecting gene. Scientists predict that could be the beginning of a pandemic that could kill millions of people, rivaling the 1918 epidemic that killed 40 million people.
. . If the virus takes on a human gene, the immune system might recognize the infection and mount an immune response. But with recombination, Niman said, the virus evolves to contain a gene that is part avian and part human. That would allow it to both infect humans and retain its high mortality rate. Niman calls it "elegant evolution."
. . Scientists are (rightfully) a skeptical bunch. They won't embrace a new idea like Niman's until it's published in a peer-reviewed journal --a scientific publication that sends research papers out to various experts for comments and approval before it will print the study.
. . Most worrisome is that the human segment of the flu appears to be derived from a 1933 virus related to the one that caused the 1918 flu pandemic. Most human immune systems would have no defense against it, because it was man-made in a London lab in 1940.
Feb 27, 05: Researchers at the Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School in the US have shown that the virus, which has infected 40 million people worldwide, alters its shape and triggers changes that allow it to enter cells. They obtained a three-dimensional image of a protein called gp120, part of HIV's outer membrane or envelope, before it transforms and binds to so-called CD4 receptors on the cells it wants to infect. "Knowing how gp120 changes shape is a new route to inhibiting HIV --by using compounds that inhibit the shape change.
Feb 16, 05: A New York man was infected with HIV in October and then diagnosed with full-blown AIDS within months. Typically, it takes an average of about 10 years for someone to be stricken with AIDS after infection with HIV. In the New York City man's case, full-blown AIDS appeared in a matter of weeks, not years. What makes the man's case even more exceptional is that he's also resistant to virtually all of the antiviral AIDS drugs that combat the disease.
. . It's possible the unidentified man was especially vulnerable to HIV. The man appears to fall into the 1 percent of HIV patients whose immune system promptly falls apart after they're infected. But if he turns out to have a normal immune system, that could mean his body is now home to an especially powerful and drug-resistant strain of AIDS --and one that may already have spread to other people.
. . Tests revealed that the virus in his body is resistant to 19 of 20 available AIDS drugs, meaning his strain is both quick-acting and extremely difficult to treat.
A new round of tests should provide more information about the man's own susceptibility.
Feb 7, 05: Bird flu outbreak could kill 1.5 billion people!
. . This is the worst-case scenario keeping virologists awake at night, yet the world's scientists have failed to develop a plan to protect us. While medical science has helped keep disease from the door, we haven't licked it. For the past year, New Scientist has warned that an epidemic of bird flu in east Asian poultry could turn into the next great human plague. Twelve months on, you might expect that scientists would have worked out exactly what we're up against and how we should protect ourselves. Yet surprisingly - and scarily --they haven't. It is surprising and scary because the stakes are so high.
. . The H5N1 bird flu virus has so far had trouble infecting people, but when it does it kills 75 per cent of them. The fear is that it could evolve to spread easily between people.
Jan 28, 05: A French goat has tested positive for mad cow disease --the first animal in the world other than a cow to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The European Commission says further testing will be done to see if the incidence is an isolated one. The animal, which was slaughtered in 2002, was initially thought to have scrapie, a similar brain-wasting condition sometimes seen in goats. Across the EU bloc as a whole, there are believed to be more than 11.5 million goats.
. . More than 100 people in the UK have died from vCJD (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease), the human form of BSE, after eating tainted beef. But the EC stressed that precautionary measures put in place in recent years to protect the human food chain from contaminated meats meant there was no need for alarm over the latest finding.
Jan 27, 05: The world needs an effort similar to that behind the creation of the atomic bomb to tackle the multi-faceted threat of biowarfare, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said. He predicted that the world would experience another bioweapon attack within the next decade. Next time, the death rate could be a much, much higher, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor John Deutch. An attack using the smallpox virus is overwhelmingly the largest risk, he believes.
. . The U.S. government has ordered millions of doses of smallpox vaccine as part of a wide-ranging security drive. But experts warned that other avenues were open to would-be terrorists, with diseases such as plague and Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus options for weaponization. More worryingly still, sophisticated groups might in the future use genetic engineering to produce hybrid microbes against which there are no defenses.
Jan 21, 05: Rogue proteins like those that cause mad cow disease —-found previously only in brain, nerve and lymph tissues — have now been located in the liver, kidney and pancreas in a study of rodents.
. . Rogue proteins called prions are blamed for several brain-wasting diseases, including mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. It has killed more than 140 people in Britain and at least 10 others in other parts of the world. These proteins had only been found in the brains, spinal cord and lymph tissues of infected people and animals.
. . While the discovery raises the possibility that similar proteins could move into unanticipated parts of farm animals that have similar diseases, it is not a reason for alarm, says researcher Adriano Aguzzi. He is planning similar experiments on sheep.
Jan 10, 05: A single change in a human gene may hold the key to preventing people living with HIV from progressing to full-blown AIDS, researchers said. They found a crucial difference between a gene in humans and one in rhesus monkeys that blocks infection of the virus in the animals --a finding that offers new insights into the origins of AIDS and gene therapy. Had the gene been the same in humans, there may not have been the AIDS epidemic.
. . Scientists had been aware that it was much more difficult to infect monkey cells with HIV than human cells in laboratory experiments, which suggested there was something different in the animal cells that blocked infection. A gene called Trim 5 alpha was later found to be the reason why. In monkeys, but not in humans, it stops the virus from replicating. He and his team believe introducing the gene carrying that single change back into human cells would make those cells resistant to HIV infection.
. . Gene therapy is an experimental technique which introduces genetic material into cells to fight disease. The technique has been used for Parkinson's disease and in trials for illnesses such as cystic fibrosis and cancer. But Stoye stressed that more laboratory research, followed by animal tests and human trials will be needed.
Jan 7, 05: Genetic resistance to AIDS works in different ways and appears in different ethnic groups. The most powerful form of resistance, caused by a genetic defect, is limited to people with European or Central Asian heritage. An estimated 1 percent of people descended from Northern Europeans are virtually immune to AIDS infection, with Swedes the most likely to be protected. One theory suggests that the mutation developed in Scandinavia and moved southward with Viking raiders.
. . To be protected, people must inherit the genes from both parents; those who inherit a mutated gene from just one parent will end up with greater resistance against HIV than other people, but they won't be immune. An estimated 10 percent to 15 percent of those descended from Northern Europeans have the lesser protection. Using formulas that estimate how long genetic mutations have been around, researchers have discovered that the mutation dates to the Middle Ages.
. . Researchers initially thought the mutation provided protection against the bubonic plague that caused the Black Death in Europe. The plague scenario has been largely discarded in favor of another deadly scourge. "A disease like smallpox that has been continuous since that time ... is more likely." While the plague came and went, smallpox stuck around well into the 20th century, providing even more incentive for a protective gene to live on: It would keep people alive generation after generation, instead of just during one brief epidemic.
. . There are other cases of genetic mutations affecting two diseases: People who inherit one of the two mutations necessary to develop sickle-cell anemia end up with extra resistance to malaria.
. . New research shows that members of several ethnic groups have another, less-powerful kind of AIDS resistance. People who have more copies of a specific gene end up with greater resistance to AIDS, in some cases significantly changing how they handle getting infected. Those with the most copies of the gene --but only as compared with others in their ethnic group-- had the most immunity to HIV. The HIV-positive people with the fewest gene copies got sick as much as 2.6 times faster than others who were infected.
. . Then there's the pesky matter of the few people who have gotten infected with HIV even though they're supposed to be immune. "It's extremely rare", Mosier said, "but you don't want to tell people they'll be protected and then have them change their risk behavior and get exposed."
Jan 6, 05: In Kenya, AIDS deaths are "equivalent to two 747 jets crashing every day", stated a recent Red Cross report.
Jan 4, 05: German scientists have found a new way to prevent the HIV virus from replicating, offering hope in the face of the virus's increasing resistance to existing drugs. The team had identified a protein in human cells that the HIV virus uses to reproduce and run tests on a chemical that blocks this protein's action. The researchers believe the cellular protein they have singled out is a promising target for drugs that could avoid creating multiple resistance.
. . The tests showed it consistently blocked multiplication and had no tendency of the HIV virus to develop any resistance. It also produced no clear toxic side-effects, a major problem in the development of medicines to fight HIV. Almost all anti-retroviral drugs attack the virus after it has infected the body's immune system and simply suppress replication, so patients must take the drug for life.
. . "We are far away from a therapy." It typically requires five to 10 years from test phases before a drug becomes available.
zoonotic diseases --they start in animals, usually chickens, and cross the species barrier to cause unique human infections.
. . Medical science has undergone a revolution since the 1918 Flu pandemic. We have drugs and vaccines that can work against the virus. But the problem is that even this modern technology takes time to get up to speed. First, the new strain has to emerge, and then a vaccine must be developed and millions of doses grown. The minimum time span is around several months; by which time, millions could be dead.
Dec 14, 04: Vaccinating mice against Lyme disease may help protect people against the infection, which is often spread from mice to humans, U.S. researchers said. This strategy could have significant implications, not only for preventing Lyme disease, but for preventing other vector-borne diseases as well, including plague and West Nile virus.
. . Lyme disease is caused when people are bitten by a tick carrying the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. It affected 23,000 Americans in 2002 and causes a characteristic "bull's-eye" rash, fatigue, chills and fever, headache, muscle aches and joint pain. Untreated, it can lead to more severe symptoms and arthritis.
. . It would be necessary to develop a vaccine that could be given orally, probably in mouse bait. When an infected tick nymph feeds on an immunized mouse, the mouse's immune system kills the bacteria inside the nymph.
. . "When the vaccine is targeted to humans, only those who experienced a satisfactory immune response to the vaccine are protected; however, when the vaccine is targeted to wildlife carriers, the risk of infection is lowered for everyone in the community."
Dec 8, 04: Scientists said today they have identified key genes involved in the body's response to HIV, which causes AIDS --a finding that could narrow the search for an effective vaccine against the deadly illness. They focused their research on genes called HLA-A, HLA-B and HLA-C which produce molecules that sit on the surface of cells. They tell immune system killer T-cells when new viruses are produced within an infected cell and should be destroyed. The scientists said HLA-B genes are the key players in the body's response to infections, including HIV.
Dec 4, 04: In 1984, the Bhopal plant was the site of the world's worst industrial disaster. Twenty years later, the Union Carbide plant, on the night of Dec. 3, 1984, as the residents of this central Indian city slept, nearly 40 tons of methyl isocyanate leaked from the pesticide plant. Around 10,000 people died, Indian officials say, and more than half a million people were affected by the poisonous fumes. The exact number of victims has never been clear.
. . Most vulnerable were the children. Within a few days of the accident, thousands of children were dead. Many women who were pregnant at the time of the leak suffered miscarriages, and many others gave birth to babies with severe mental and physical handicaps. "Even today, mothers in the affected areas of Bhopal have been found to have carcinogenic elements in their breast milk."
Nov 23, 04: Women make up nearly half of the 37.2 million adults living with HIV and in sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion rises to almost 60 percent, according to a UN report. In every region of the globe, the number of women infected with the deadly virus has risen during the past two years. East Asia had the highest jump with 56 percent, followed by Eastern Europe and Central Asia with 48 percent.
. . In sub-Saharan Africa, three-quarters of all 15-24 year olds living with HIV are female. Sixty-four percent of all HIV positive people worldwide and 76 percent of all women with the virus are in sub-Saharan Africa.
. . The Caribbean, with an average adult HIV prevalence rate of 2.3 percent, is the second most affected region in the world.
Oct 19, 04: The bird flu epidemic that has killed 31 people in southeast Asia this year may also have killed 23 tigers at a zoo in eastern Thailand, a cabinet minister said. The tigers died after they had been fed raw chicken.
. . Scientific studies have shown since that cats can be infected with avian flu, pigs and pets could spread the disease. That could produce a mutation that could spread through a human population with no immunity to it and lead to a pandemic like the 1918-19 Spanish flu, which killed an estimated 20 million people around the world.
Oct 14, 04: Ten or more years of mobile phone use increases the risk of developing acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor on the auditory nerve, according to a study released by Sweden's Karolinska Institute. The institute, one of Europe's largest medical universities and a clinical and biomedical research center, awards the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
. .The risk was confined to the side of the head where the phone was usually held and there were no indications of increased risk for those who have used their mobile for less than 10 years. "At the time when the study was conducted only analog mobile phones had been in use for more than 10 years and therefore we cannot determine if there results are confined to use of analog phones or if the results would be similar also after long-term use of digital (GSM) phones", it said.
. . "The risk of acoustic neuroma was almost doubled for persons who started to use their mobile at least 10 years prior to diagnosis. When the side of the head on which the phone was usually held was taken into consideration, we found that the risk of acoustic neuroma was almost four times higher on the same side as the phone was held and virtually normal on the other side."
Oct 7, 04: Australian and British scientists have achieved a technical breakthrough to help control insects that have developed resistance to common agricultural pesticides. The technique relies on the use of naturally occurring enzyme inhibitors to disarm an insect's defense system. "The enzyme inhibitor acts first to shut down an insect's resistance mechanisms. A few hours later, while the bug's defenses are still low, the pesticide kicks in."
. . The technique could also help curb the potential overuse of pesticides and cut farm costs. "Trials in NSW and Queensland achieved almost 100 percent mortality in cotton bollworm and silverleaf whitefly."
. . [The article didn't mention Malaria, Sleeping Sickness, West Nile, etc -carrying insects!!]
Swaziland has one of the highest AIDS prevalence rates in the world --close to 40 percent of its adults are infected.
Sept 2, 04: New insect repellents may work by stopping pesky mosquitoes and flies from sniffing out their prey, U.S. researchers reported. They found a single gene controls the sense of smell in fruit flies and probably other insects.
. . "Insects are the primary vectors for malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, and West Nile encephalitis, and they locate human hosts largely through their exquisitely sensitive olfactory systems."
. . Vosshall and colleagues bred fruit flies that lack a gene known as Or83b. Writing in the journal Neuron, they said the tiny flies had no sense of smell. It may be possible to design a compound that blocks the gene.
Aug 23, 04: China's Ministry of Agriculture confirmed that a deadly strain of bird flu was found in pigs last year. The ramifications of infection among pigs could be extremely grave, as researchers fear it might be the first step of a mutation of the virus into a form that could spread more easily to humans. Until now, H5N1 had been found only in poultry.
July 29, 04: July 29, 04: California scientists say they have created the first synthetic version of a rogue protein called a prion and used it to give mice a brain-destroying infection, evidence important to settling any lingering doubt these mysterious substances alone cause mad cow disease and similar illnesses.
. . Skeptics already are criticizing the research. But if the work ultimately is validated it could have far-reaching implications — such as helping to create diagnostic tests for mad cow disease. It also could help explain why normal brain proteins suddenly go bad and sicken some people who've never eaten mad cow-tainted food.
. . Related diseases —-including mad cow, scrapie in sheep and the human Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD-— are believed to arise when a protein the body normally harbors folds into an abnormal shape, called a prion, and sets off a chain reaction of misfolds that eventually leaves clumps of dead brain cells.
. . But skeptics have long questioned if these bad proteins truly act alone. Unlike viruses or bacteria, prions contain no genetic material, once thought crucial to cause infection. Repeated attempts at definitive proof of prion infectiousness have failed.
. . Such research also may finally reveal how the protein morphs from normal to killer and thus shed light on the human illness called "classic CJD".
July 9, 04: University of Arizona researchers will work with Mexican health officials to combat dengue fever- and West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes that are plaguing the United States and northern Mexico.
. . The reported number of dengue fever cases in Sonora has more than quadrupled in the last several years. There were 1,177 cases of dengue last year compared to 258 cases in 2002. Dengue fever is an infectious disease carried by mosquitoes and found mostly in Central and South America and other tropical areas. The disease is found during or shortly after the rainy season in tropical or subtropical areas, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It's sometimes called "break-bone fever" because of the severe joint and muscle pain it causes. One form, dengue hemorrhagic fever, is fatal in about one out of every 20 patients, & there is no vaccine.
July 6, 04: The world is losing the race against the AIDS virus, which last year infected a record 5 million people and killed an unprecedented 3 million, the United Nations reported today. The virus has now pushed deep into Eastern Europe and Asia, and tackling it will be more expensive than previously believed, according to the most accurate picture to date of the global status of HIV infections. The report says about 38 million people are infected. Nine out of 10 people who urgently need treatment are not getting it, and prevention is only reaching one in five at risk.
. . In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people living with HIV appears to have leveled off at about 25 million. However, that stability is deceptive: Both deaths and new infections are up, and it remains the worst-hit region. Haiti has the highest infection rate outside Africa with 5.6 percent of the population afflicted.
. . Two years ago, the United Nations predicted that $10 billion a year would be needed by 2005. Now that figure is $12 billion.
July 1, 04: A study of HIV-infected African women found that daily doses of multivitamins appear to slow down the disease and cut the risk of developing AIDS in half. The researchers who conducted the study in Tanzania suggested that vitamin supplements could be used in developing countries to delay the need for AIDS drugs, saving them for use at more advanced stages and avoiding their side effects.
. . Fawzi stressed that the vitamins are not a substitute for powerful AIDS drugs, which are used once an HIV infection reaches later stages. Until recently, AIDS drugs were not available to most people in Tanzania, and they were not available when the study was done, he said.
June 28, 04: A frightening strain of bird flu that can kill people is mutating into an ever more deadly form in ducks and needs to be controlled quickly, U.S. and Chinese researchers reported. They found steady changes in the so-called H5N1 virus infecting flocks of apparently healthy ducks that made the virus more likely to kill mammals such as mice --and perhaps people, too.
. . Unlike ordinary influenza, so far H5N1 cannot be spread from person to person, so it does not cause human epidemics. But flu experts say the virus, which mutates quickly, could acquire this ability at any time.
June 21, 04: Tears could be a means of spreading SARS, but analyzing samples taken from tear ducts could also help with detecting the virus early, doctors in Singapore said. They found the virus in samples taken from tear ducts. This may mean that the virus could be spread through tears, in addition to droplets from coughs or sneezes.
. . Herpes viruses, chicken pox, Epstein Barr virus, hepatitis C and B, and measles have also been detected in tears.
Deep in Siberia, a four-hour flight from Moscow, the state-owned Vector research center at Novosibirsk does research into deadly diseases such as SARS, Ebola, and anthrax. Along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, it is one of only two places on earth with official stockpiles of smallpox, which killed around 300 million people last century.
May 10, 04: The deadly SARS virus might be more contagious than previously thought and possibly transmitted by contaminated food or water, droplets of mucus, urine, feces and sweat, scientists reported. "There is a strong possibility that SARS could be spread via water and skin contact."
. . SARS first emerged in southern China in 2002. It infected more than 8,000 people in nearly 30 countries and killed nearly 800. Although the outbreak was brought under control, public health experts say it could re-emerge.
Apr 30, 04: Women in South Africa whose partners are violent and domineering have a 50 percent increased risk of being infected with AIDS, scientists said. More than one in five pregnant women are infected with HIV in most countries in southern Africa.
Mar 25, 04: Scientists at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories are looking into the nuances of plague, using fleas to cause it in hairless mice and then trying to control it with a new vaccine. Their experiments show a new vaccine developed by the U.S. Army is effective and mark the first time anyone has tested a plague vaccine by replicating how a plague is spread.
. . They took 1,000 fleas and let them feed on blood tainted with a form of plague and then released the fleas in small batches on two groups of hairless mice. Fifteen of the mice had been inoculated with the Army's vaccine and 15 had not. All the vaccinated mice remained healthy. Fourteen of the nonvaccinated mice became sick and were put to death.
. . The plague ravaged Europe during the 1300s. The Japanese released infected fleas on the Chinese in 1940s.
Feb 25, 04: Scientists say they have discovered why some monkeys are resistant to infection with the AIDS virus —-an exhilarating find that points to a new and highly promising strategy for blocking HIV in people. The discovery capped a more than 10-year search for the answer to the mystery of what stops the virus cold in certain primates. The finding could lead to drugs to treat AIDS infection or a vaccine to prevent it.
. . Normally, a virus spreads through the body by entering cells, hijacking their machinery, and using it to make new copies of itself. But monkeys have a protein called TRIM5-alpha that is somehow able to stop the virus from shedding its protective coat after it enters a healthy cell. The shedding of the coating is poorly understood but considered essential to the infection cycle. Humans have their own version of TRIM5-alpha, but it is not as effective as the monkey version.
. . Researchers may be able to design a drug that makes it work better
said the same mechanism may even work against other viruses. HIV belongs to a class of viruses called retroviruses that are able to permanently incorporate their genetic material into the DNA of an infected cell. Once established, the virus cannot be eliminated.
. . But retroviruses also are short-lived if they cannot establish a toehold, Wong said, so HIV quickly decays when the TRIM5-alpha protein blocks it from replicating in the early stage of infection.
May 17, 04: Cattle brains and other remains that may carry the deadly mad cow disease would be turned into biofuels under a plan announced on Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Cattle brains, skull, eyes, spinal column, small intestine and other parts suspected of harboring mad cow disease were banned from human consumption in December as a safety precaution.
Feb 17, 04: Fear of catching bird flu from eating chicken has prompted some people in northwest Cambodia to resort to eating rats. Villagers catch the rodents in nearby rice fields and sell them for up to 35 cents each to market vendors, who resell the meat for about 20 cents a pound. Mao Say, 50, told the newspaper that she and her four children catch about 18 pounds of rats in the rice fields daily.
Feb 17, 04: Italian scientists have found a second form of mad cow disease that more closely resembles the human Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease than the usual cow form of the illness.
. . The brain-wasting diseases BSE, known as mad cow disease, and human CJD are caused by different forms of mutant proteins called prions. A number of people, mainly in England, have also suffered from what is called variant CJD, a brain disease believed to be acquired by eating meat from infected cows.
Now, the team of Italian researchers reports a study of eight cows with mad cow disease found that two of them had brain damage resembling the human victims of CJD.
Feb 12, 04: Brain imaging studies suggest that the same genetic variations that give people hostile personality traits may also make them more likely to become addicted to nicotine, the team at the University of California Irvine reported. "We call this brain response a 'born to smoke' pattern."
. . Groups included smokers and nonsmokers. They were given nicotine patches to wear and their brains were imaged using positron emission tomography, or PET scans.
. . The scans showed no metabolic changes in the brain cells of the low-hostility volunteers but the response of the "hostile" personalities was clear. "In turn, this might also help explain why other people have no compelling drive to smoke or can quit smoking with relative ease", he added.
Feb 5, 04: The 1918 flu virus, which killed 20 million people around the world, was probably so deadly because of a unique bird-like protein, U.S. and British scientists reported. Like a current outbreak of bird flu in east Asia, the 1918 influenza appears to have jumped from birds to people with little change, they wrote.
In 1997, when it first appeared in Hong Kong, it was contained very quickly because it did not spread from human to human, but only from birds to people. But there is some evidence it may have begun spreading from person to person. If that happens, experts fear the virus has the potential to be as bad as the 1918 epidemic.
Feb 2, 04: Chagas disease, a deadly parasitic blood illness that recently has drawn attention in this country, has infected some South and Central Americans for at least 9,000 years, researchers said. The Red Cross announced last year that it expects to begin testing donated blood for the disease. Seven cases, spread by transfusions, have been reported in the United States and Canada since 1986.
. . The team tested 283 mummies and found evidence for the DNA of the parasite that causes the disease on almost 41 percent.
. . Chagas disease is caused by the trypanosome parasite, which burrows into its host's tissue and multiplies. There is no cure, and the disease eventually overwhelms patients' systems. The parasite is spread by insects that feed on blood.
Jan 30, 04: A newly discovered neurodegenerative disease could be affecting tens of thousands of men around the world, say researchers. It closely resembles Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and senile dementia, but appears to be caused by a genetic defect linked to fragile X syndrome. Until now carrying the defect was not thought to be harmful. They believe the new disease, named FXTAS (fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome), may affect up to one in 3000 men, with most sufferers being over 50 years old.
Jan 30, 04: Scientists have identified a genetic trait in elk that resists chronic wasting disease and want to breed a herd that has a natural defense against the fatal brain malady. The disease is especially worrisome because of its possible connection to mad cow disease and its human variant, Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease. A prevalent theory is that the disease is caused by a small, defective protein called a prion, which is composed of normal protein-making genes. Fewer than 1 percent of elk have the disease-resistant trait. Dyar said one of his study topics is why the percentage is so low.
. . "We hope that the knowledge we learn in this study will help us find similar solutions in other species."
Jan 28, 04: The unusually large number of ducks dying from bird flu in southern China indicates the bug has become more virulent, which will put more people at risk of contracting it, Hong Kong scientists said. They also raised the alarm about chilled and frozen poultry meat, saying the deadly H5N1 virus could survive for years in temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees Celsius (-94 F), but repeated that it can be killed if meat is cooked properly.
. . "H5 viruses are generally less fatal to ducks, so it is uncommon for so many ducks to die. This means this particular H5N1 strain has become more virulent."
Scientists said they could not rule out the possibility that the new, more powerful bird flu strain might make the jump from human to human less difficult. So far, most of those infected were in close contact with chickens at home or on farms.
. . Experts were divided over whether the vaccine used to inoculate chickens against the bird flu is still useful. The vaccine was cultured from the milder H5N2 virus.
Jan 26, 04: The World Health Organization said the search for a Bird Flu vaccine has been set back because the virus has mutated. A previous strain detected in Hong Kong in 1997 can no longer be used as the key to producing a vaccine, so an international effort has become necessary, WHO said.
Jan 12, 04: Waste Reduction by Waste Reduction Inc., says that by using the kinds of chemicals that go into a drain-clearing product such as Drano, they can safely break down the suspected disease-causing proteins, known as prions.
. . Prions are misshaped proteins believed to cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. They eat at the brain tissue of cattle by forcing proteins performing other jobs to take their shape, resulting in a chain reaction.
Incineration has been the popular method to destroy the carcasses of afflicted cattle. But researchers say tests have revealed that the prions survive and can emerge from the ashes.
. . Waste Reduction claims its pressure cooker-like machine, dubbed a digester, not only breaks prions into harmless amino acids but emits no toxic gases and operates at a fraction of the cost of an incinerator. Operating costs for the digesters, about 25 cents per pound of carcass, is lower than that of incinerators, which can cost 80 cents to a $1 a pound due to high fuel costs.
Jan 9, 04: One of the most common mosquitos found in North America, the same type that is capable of spreading the West Nile Virus, has showed signs of resistance to common pesticides. And as resistance increases, even the strongest, most toxic pesticides may prove useless.
Dec 27, 03: In people, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can develop as quickly as five years or can incubate for more than a decade. Humans can develop non-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease without eating tainted beef products. Its precise cause is unknown and it only infects about one person per million worldwide. It takes longer to develop —-sometimes up to 40 years.
. . In cattle, which have shorter life spans, the disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy --BSE-- takes more than two years to show up. Cattle get it by eating food made from processed meat products that include infected brain or nerve tissue. There's no evidence that infectious prions can be transmitted through cow's milk.
. . It's caused by prions. For unknown reasons, when these proteins in brain and nerve cells misfold, they induce proteins in adjacent cells to misfold and clump, too. But unlike viruses and other infectious agents, prions withstand ultraviolet light, ionizing radiation, sterilizing temperatures and chemical disinfectants. They don't contain genetic material, which means prions don't have a biological target that can be easily attacked by drugs or vaccines.
. . Sheep develop a spongiform ailment known as scrapie. Both wild and farmed deer and elk in the United States have had a related infection, chronic wasting disease.
Dec 5, 03: A clinic in Kenya, run by government researchers, has recorded data on 2,200 prostitutes. At any one time, there have been some 60 women considered immune to HIV. The immunity is genetic and runs in some families. Due to genetic differences and factors involving repeated exposure to the virus, the prostitutes react differently, developing cells called Cytotoxic T-Lymphocytes (CTLs) that kill the virus.
. . Doctors are currently carrying out phase two to find out whether HIV negative people on the proposed vaccine produce CTLs instead of antibodies when exposed to AIDS.
Nov 26, 03: New global estimates released today based on improved data show about 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, including an estimated 2.5 million children under 15 years old. About five million people were infected in 2003 and more than three million died.
. . "The AIDS epidemic continues to expand." Southern Africa is home to about 30 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS, yet the region has less than two percent of the global population.
. . In Botswana and Swaziland, the infection rate among adults is 40 percent. 20% of pregnant women in some African countries is infected, which is more easily transmitted from men to women than the other way around.
. . "The death odometer from HIV/AIDS is now at 8,000 a day and accelerating."
Nov 18, 03: U.S. researchers said they were starting testing on the first experimental vaccine against the Ebola virus in people. It is considered a threat because it is deadly, highly infectious and has no treatment. U.S. experts fear it could also be used as a biological weapon.
Nov 13, 03: In patients taking pravastatin, or Pravachol, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, atherosclerosis worsened slowly over 18 months. But the disease was halted in those who took the highest dose of atorvastatin, or Lipitor, the drug made by Pfizer.
. . National guidelines call for lowering L.D.L. levels in heart disease patients to less than 100 milligrams per deciliter of blood.
. . Researchers say they only recently came to understand how plaque in artery walls can kill. They used to think that the danger period was when the tumorlike plaque narrowed arteries. Now, said Dr. Peter Libby, the chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, they realize that the danger occurs long before that.
. . At first, plaque grows from the inner wall of the artery out, Dr. Libby said, making the artery thicker but not narrower. Only at the very end of this process does the plaque start to grow inward, narrowing the artery. But most fatal heart attacks, Dr. Libby said, occur when one of the earlier-stage plaques pops open. Blood pours out, clots, obstructs the artery, and a heart attack ensues.
. . Pravastatin patients in the study whose L.D.L. levels fell below 100 still had plaque growth while atorvastatin patients with those L.D.L. levels did not.
The banded sunfish is so ravenous that some scientists think it could be the perfect mosquito killing machine, potentially putting a major dent in the pest's East Coast population. This summer ('03), researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole revived dormant research into using the fish for mosquito control.
. . The fish could infiltrate remote areas that are difficult to reach with the larvicide widely used today, providing more effective control for less money and blunting the reach of mosquito-borne diseases like the West Nile virus
The fish had to be native to Massachusetts, so it didn't threaten indigenous species. It also had to thrive in shallow water with low oxygen content, where mosquito larvae are often found. The banded sunfish fit the bill.
Oct 15, 03: Scientists are a step closer to understanding how a normal brain protein transforms itself and causes fatal brain-wasting illnesses such as mad cow disease and its human equivalent. Scientists had been puzzled about how prions replicate because they do not have RNA or DNA, the nucleic acids that carry the genetic instructions to build proteins in living organisms or viruses.
. . But researchers have discovered that RNA may be the trigger that changes the harmless prions into rogue infectious agents. "This stimulatory RNA appears to be a specific one, which makes it exciting to study. If we can identify, clone and produce this specific RNA, it may be useful as a therapeutic target or diagnostic tool."
There is no cure for the illness or other prion diseases.
. . The incubation period, before signs of the illness are evident, can be a decade or more. As the illness progresses, sufferers gradually lose their co-ordination and cognitive ability.
A genetic susceptibility may explain why SARS raged last year in Southeast Asia and nowhere else in the world outside of Toronto, Taiwanese researchers reported. They found a certain variant in an immune system gene called human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, made patients in Taiwan much more likely to develop life-threatening symptoms of SARS. The gene variant is common in people of southern Chinese descent. The disease was mostly confined among southern Asian populations (the Hong Kong people, Vietnamese, Singaporeans and Taiwanese.
Sept 23, 03: Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague said his research showed a parasite called toxoplasma gondii in cats, rabbits or raw meat, may make women reckless and friendly while making men jealous and morose.
. . Just contracting the bug might not be life-threatening but infected women behind the wheel can be fatal, and those out for a stroll in busy traffic may be a hazard, he said. "It is not much fun. Our research has shown that toxoplasmosis raises 2.6 times the risk of a traffic accident by prolonging the reaction time of infected people."
. . Men infected by the bug tend to be quiet, withdrawn, suspicious, jealous and dogmatic. He said he could not find a reason for the different reactions.
. . The illness could be responsible for up to one million of deaths on the roads worldwide, making it the one of the deadliest parasitic diseases, second only to malaria.
Sept 23, 03: Several American mothers nursing their infants had high levels of potentially toxic flame retardant chemicals in their breastmilk, a U.S. environmental group said. While the study by the Environmental Working Group was small and did not show any health effects in the babies, the group said it showed just how widespread the chemicals are.
. . The chemicals are bromine-based fire retardants and are used in a wide range of products including furniture, computers, television sets, automobiles, copy machines and hair dryers to make them less likely to catch fire. They can build up in the body over years.
. . "Brominated fire retardants impair attention, learning, memory, and behavior in laboratory animals at surprisingly low levels." "The average level of bromine-based fire retardants in the milk of 20 first-time mothers was 75 times the average found in recent European studies", the report reads.
Sept 16, 03: A two-step approach against AIDS involving first flushing the virus out of hiding then killing it with a toxic antibody may offer the first hope for controlling a lifelong AIDS infection, U.S. researchers reported. It works in mice and is ready to test in monkeys.
. . Highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, can keep HIV patients healthy for decades, but they do not reach a latent virus -- which has been found to lurk inside immune system cells for decades and probably for a lifetime. "About one in a million T-cells holds latent HIV that the antiretroviral drugs can't touch."
Sept 9, 03: A killer sheep disease as dangerous as foot-and-mouth, but previously confined to Africa, has jumped into Europe and is heading steadily north as the climate warms. Bluetongue disease, which is carried by midges, weakens blood vessels causing heavy hemorrhaging and blindness, making it hard for the sheep to feed, see or move. Bluetongue --named because of the hemorrhaging in the animals' mouths-- killed up to 70 percent of infected flocks.
. . "This is almost certainly caused by climate change", Mellor said, adding that with every one degree rise in temperature, the midge expanded its range 90 km further north.
. . The good news was that there was no animal-to-animal infection. But the bad news was that cattle could harbor the bluetongue virus without showing any symptoms and act as a disease timebomb waiting for a midge to come along and start the sheep reinfection process all over again.
. . Vaccination did help, but current vaccines were live and conversely could actually spark off an epidemic. Because cattle could harbor the disease they too would have to be included in any vaccination program. However, scientists are hard at work to find a safer vaccine which they hope will be ready within five years.
Sept 4, 03: Genetic testing of animals sold as delicacies in a southern Chinese market confirms suspicions that the deadly SARS virus jumped from animals to people, Chinese researchers said. The researchers found clear differences between the animal and human versions of the virus, but said they were minor enough to show that SARS jumped from animals, as influenza and other viruses have done. The lead suspect was a palm civet, a raccoon-like animal valued as a delicacy.
. . Health experts fear it could return in the autumn because other known coronaviruses are seasonal, as are numerous cold viruses and the influenza virus.
Sept 4, 03: Chronic wasting disease, first identified in 1967, is transmitted more easily than previously thought, a finding that complicates efforts to curb the relative of mad cow disease as it spreads in populations of deer and elk, according to a new study. Researchers who previously believed transmission from doe to fawn played an important role in its spread now say that's not the case. Instead, the contagious brain disease is "remarkably efficient" at spreading from animal to animal, new research shows.
. . The finding suggests it will be harder to control the fatal disease other than through the drastic thinning or eradication of infected herds, as has happened in parts of Wisconsin.
. . Researchers now believe the disease spreads in deer and elk when they encounter infected feces or saliva.
. . There is no evidence the disease infects either livestock or humans.
Sept 2, 03: A cruise ship cut short its North Atlantic voyage after 340 passengers and crew were sickened by the, the disease that battered the cruise industry last year. Symptoms of the Norwalk virus, also known as norovirus, are generally serious only for the very young and the elderly. The symptoms include diarrhea and vomiting for two days.
Aug 6, 03: U.S. government researchers said they had developed a vaccine that protected monkeys against Ebola virus with a single dose --offering a new way to stop an outbreak of the deadly disease. The vaccine was made using a new approach that should work against a range of other viruses, as well, the researchers said. And the new technology might offer a quick way to develop an instant vaccine against new infections, such as SARS, or even a biological weapon.
. . With ring vaccination (as was so successful w smallpox), everyone who has been in contact with a patient, as well as all members of the patient's household, are vaccinated. It is also safer than the smallpox vaccine, which uses a live virus related to smallpox.
July 26, 03: Evidence is growing that "superinfection" with more than one strain of HIV may be more common than previously thought, which could complicate efforts to make a vaccine, experts said. Genetic tests on a superinfected woman showed the two viruses mixed and produced a hybrid that took over from the original virus.
. . Although the development of a hybrid was not surprising-- scientists estimate there are 14 mixed strains circulating -- the report is the first documented case of two HIV strains, or subtypes, combining in one person to form a third strain. "The issue is: can you get a vaccine that will cover all subtypes?"
July 17, 03: About 10 percent of Europeans infected with HIV contract a strain of the virus that is resistant to at least one AIDS drug, according to the first large-scale study of the problem. Resistance is mainly caused by patients not taking medicines on schedule, allowing mutant viruses to evolve that are resistant. An earlier study in the United States showed that at least half of all Americans under care for HIV infection carry drug-resistant viruses. There are 19 drugs approved in the United States now with 21 or 22 formulations ... It means there are hundreds, if not thousands, of potential combinations.
July 9, 03: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it had approved the first test for doctors to give to patients they suspect have West Nile virus.
July 3, 03: China, India and Cambodia could face an AIDS "catastrophe" as the HIV virus spreads deeper into parts of Asia where health controls are weak, the U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. "In some countries, for example, Cambodia, or in what we believe in China and India, the public health measures have yet to take hold and the epidemic really is in that phase of scaling up very, very quickly."
July ~1, 03: Civets, a nocturnal mammal similar to a mongoose, carry the SARS virus in their stool and respiratory secretions, but are themselves unaffected. They examined 25 animals representing eight species in a live animal market in southern China and found the virus in all six masked palm civets they sampled, as well as in a badger and a raccoon.
July 1, 03: An outbreak of monkeypox that has affected 81 people has been traced to a giant Gambian rat and assorted other small rodents imported as pets from Africa, U.S. health officials said. Rats, mice, and rabbits can get monkeypox, too.
June 26, 03: Researchers said they had figured out how a rare antibody sees past the disguises of the AIDS virus --a finding that may lead to a vaccine that will finally work against the killer microbe. The antibody, taken from a unusual patient whose body can resist the virus, recognizes and attacks the human immunodeficiency virus, unlike most of the body's defenses. "Nothing like this has ever been seen before."
. . The human body makes plenty of antibodies against HIV, but the virus disguises itself with human sugars. One antibody seems to be able to see past this ruse. Called 2G12, it was found by Austrian researchers a decade ago in a patient who seemed to resist.
. . Writing in the journal Science, Wilson and colleagues said they had figured out how 2G12 does it. It recognizes that while HIV is covered up with human sugars, they are not arranged in a human-like way. The antibody does this with a special structure of its own, which Wilson and colleagues, including a team at Oxford University in Britain, have crystallized and imaged.
June 13, 03: A compound isolated from the root of the liquorice plant could be more effective than current treatments for SARS, the virus that has killed 780 people worldwide, German scientists said. Glycyrrhizin, or liquorice root, is already given to patients suffering from HIV and hepatitis C. Researchers at Frankfurt University Medical School now believe it could help to combat SARS.
June 13, 03: European and U.S. researchers tracking the origins of the AIDS virus said they had traced it to monkeys in Africa later eaten by chimpanzees who were then butchered by humans for meat. Four years ago, the same researchers argued humans probably got the AIDS virus from chimpanzees carrying the simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV, the precursor to the HIV virus. Sharp said the chimpanzee was found to be infected by a hybrid virus that came from the red-capped mangabey and the greater spot-nosed monkeys.
. . In addition, while monkeys may have been infected with SIVs for hundreds of years, Sharp said research indicated chimpanzees acquired SIV much more recently.
June 14, 03: Colorado still has bragging rights as the leanest state in the country. However, things are changing, with adult obesity more than doubling over the past decade, Mississippi's obesity rate is 26.5 percent, the country's highest.
June 2, 03: An antibody that homes in on the warped proteins that cause mad cow disease and related diseases may offer a test for the deadly illness and also a treatment, researchers said.
. . The deformed prion proteins that cause the diseases carry a distinct genetic signature, and immune system proteins called antibodies can recognize it. The researchers are already working on a vaccine using the antibody, to use in cattle and sheep and deer and elk.
. . Sheep get a TSE called scrapie; deer and elk develop chronic wasting disease; and cats, mink, mice and other animals can all be infected. Humans are susceptible to several TSEs, including vCJD, kuru --caused by cannibalism-- and regular CJD, which occurs for unknown reasons in about one in a million people.
. . TSEs usually can only be definitively diagnosed after death, by looking at the brain. "For blood screening and for the screening of herds, one would want to have a non-invasive test." . "There is no science yet for how long it (the infective prion) takes to go away."
May 31, 03: The leading U.S. group of cancer physicians urged an immediate $2-per-pack increase in taxes on cigarettes and other steps to curb smoking, which is projected to kill a billion people worldwide this century. Right now, Bunn said, some federal agencies are helping to promote exports of U.S. tobacco products while other agencies are working to cut use.
. . One-third of all U.S. cancer deaths relate directly to tobacco.
May 30, 03: American-made cigarettes contain up to twice as much of a cancer-causing chemical --nitrosamine-- as foreign brands, federal health officials.
. . It's a result of way the tobacco is cured and blended. The CDC warned that nitrosamines are not the only carcinogen in cigarette smoke and that "reducing their levels alone does not guarantee a less hazardous cigarette."
May 29, 03: Pregnant women living near incinerators or crematoriums may have a higher risk of having a child with birth defects, according to findings of a British research team.
. . Scientists at the University of Newcastle said they uncovered a 17 percent higher incidence of spina bifida and a 12 percent greater incidence of heart defects in an analysis of almost 245,000 births in northwest England between 1956 and 1993.
Both gave out harmful chemicals, including dioxins.
May 19, 03: The world must tighten its defenses against infectious disease because other potential killers like SARS are sure to come along, World Health Organization officials said. A new influenza pandemic, similar to those that killed millions in the 20th century, is overdue and countries need to be ready, they told a news conference. "There will be more outbreaks like SARS. Influenza will almost certainly occur as its did three times in the last century as well as diseases we do not yet know." It's fatal in some 15 percent of all cases, but higher among older victims.
May 6, 03: The death rate from SARS could be as high as 55 percent in people over 60 years old and 13 percent in those under 60, an international team of scientists estimated. For under 60s: between seven and 13 percent. The best estimate for the over 60s: between 43 and 55 percent. There's no evidence to show that the death rate has gone up over time.
. . The incubation period --the time from infection to displaying symptoms-- averaged six days. Estimated time from hospital admission to death from SARS was 36 days, and from admission to discharge was 23.5 days.
There is hope that a blood test able to detect West Nile would be available by July '03.
Apr 13, 03: Scientists broke the genetic code of the virus suspected of causing Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the first step toward developing a test for doctors to diagnose victims of SARS or, in future, a possible vaccine.
Apr 10, 03: Scientists said today they have identified the virus behind the deadly respiratory illness. The new coronavirus, a relative of one of the many viruses that cause the common cold, is, as suspected, new to humans. The finding means that doctors can now concentrate on developing a simple test for the virus that will tell them right away whether a patient has it.
. . At first, a virus related to measles, mumps and some other more exotic diseases emerged as the cause of SARS, but scientists later ruled that out.
. . The CDC team is working to sequence the DNA of the virus, which will give a better idea of what it is and where it originates. But it does not look like anything they have seen before in animals or people. "Presumably, this virus originated in animals and mutated or recombined in a fashion that permitted it to infect, cause disease, and pass from person to person."
Apr 3, 03: A South African university will begin clinical trials to see if it can use microwaves to bombard the deadly HIV virus that causes AIDS and stop it from multiplying. South Africa has more people infected with HIV than any other country in the world -- just over a tenth of the 42 million people infected worldwide. KwaZulu-Natal province, home to the university, suffers the highest infection rates in the country estimated at over a third of its population.
Apr 1, 03: A common ingredient used to make plastics such as baby bottles causes birth defects in mice --defects that could also occur in people, U.S. researchers said. They urged more research into the potential effects of bisphenol A, a chemical long criticized by environmentalists as being a hormone disruptor that could cause defects in embryos.
. . The defects they found, when they occur in humans, can cause miscarriages or mental retardation such as Down Syndrome --and they seem to be caused at what were considered to be low levels of exposure. "What we saw was a tremendous increase in the number of cells in which the alignment of chromosomes in the cells were not orderly at all --they were very disorderly."
. . In the mice they were studying, this only usually happens 2 percent of the time, but Hunt's team said 40 percent of the eggs were developing these problems. They spent weeks looking for the cause. "Nothing turned up. But ... I noticed that the plastic cages looked kind of the worst for wear", Hunt said. It turned out that a harsh detergent used to clean the cages had broken down the plastic, releasing bisphenol A.
. . Hunt's team deliberately exposed mice to small amounts of bisphenol A for short periods of time and found the abnormalities increased again.
India has nearly four million people suffering from HIV/AIDS, second only to South Africa.
Mar 19, 03: Scientists in the United States said they had found a new way in which the virus that causes AIDS manages to evade the body's immune system. Viruses usually vary the protein sequence, or epitope, of their outer envelop, preventing the immune system's antibodies from targeting it. But HIV works differently.
. . "We found that the neutralizing epitopes on the virus did not change, but instead other parts of the viral envelope mutated", Shaw explained. He and his colleagues dubbed the new evasion tactic the "evolving glycan shield" and said it mutates at a faster rate than the immune system can adapt.
Mar 19, 03: The number of women being diagnosed with HIV in Europe is quickly catching up on men, researchers said on Wednesday, carrying with it the risk of more babies being born to infected mothers. . . 51 percent were infected through heterosexual contact and only 36 percent as a result of homosexual contact. This contrasted with the picture 10 years ago when the split was 28 percent heterosexual against 38 percent homosexual.
Mar 11, 03: The deadly Ebola virus has killed 100 people in the remote forests of Congo Republic and wiped out nearly two-thirds of the gorillas in a reserve. Scientists believe this outbreak was triggered by the consumption of infected monkey meat. Monkeys, chimpanzees and gorillas started dying in large numbers toward the end of last year and primatologists say the impact has been devastating on the Lossi park.
. . At an Ebola conference in Brazzaville last week, primatologist Bermejo Magdalena told Reuters that gorillas had been disappearing at an alarming rate where she works in the Lossi sanctuary, which covers 123 square miles.
. . "In the sanctuary of about 1,200 gorillas, we are now down to just 450."
Mar 12, 03: Common pain pills such as ibuprofen and naproxen may actually dissolve the brain lesions that clog the brains of Alzheimer's patient, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday. The findings may help explain studies that suggest people who frequently take the aspirin-like pills seem to have a lower risk of Alzheimer's, which affects an estimated 4 million Americans.
Mar 13, 03: U.S. health officials approved an eagerly awaited AIDS drug called Fuzeon that is the first in a new class of medicines to fight the deadly HIV virus. The drug, developed by Roche Holding AG and Trimeris Inc., will provide a new option for AIDS patients running out of alternatives. Fuzeon works by stopping the HIV virus that causes AIDS from entering immune cells. Older medicines attack the virus inside cells.
Mar 15, 03: Six more people have been killed by the Ebola virus in Congo Republic, taking the death toll in the central African country's latest outbreak to 106, the government said. A health ministry source also said some workers toiling to stop the spread of the lethal disease were among the victims, but the outbreak was being brought under control.
Mar 5, 03: Although a therapy for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is still years away, scientists at Imperial College London believe their research is a key advance in the search for a treatment. "Essentially it establishes proof of principle that... we can introduce some agent and we can effectively suppress, if not cure, the disease very efficiently."
. . It's caused by mutated prion brain proteins. When they used monoclonal antibodies on mice infected with scrapie before symptoms developed, the treatment appears to have delayed the onset of the symptoms indefinitely. Mice given the treatment in the 17-month study remained healthy almost a year after the other mice, which did not get it, died.
Feb 24, 03: The first AIDS vaccine to be tested in people failed to prevent HIV infection in the general population but may protect U.S. blacks and Asians. Long-awaited results from VaxGen's trial of AIDSVAX show the vaccine only reduced the rate of HIV infection by 3.8 percent in 5,000 men and women considered at high risk in the United States and Netherlands. When VaxGen's figures were analyzed, they showed that Asians and blacks who got the vaccine had a 67 percent lower rate of infection than those who got a placebo shot. The challenge here is to see if this a statistical fluke."
Feb 24, 03: Three experimental drugs -—a monoclonal antibody, a protease inhibitor, and a fusion inhibitor—performed well in early tests on AIDS patients.
Feb 21, 03: The "morning after" HIV treatment can supposedly help stop the virus in its tracks. The treatment, called post-exposure prophylaxis, works by attacking the virus before it begins to replicate itself in human cells. But can this controversial "morning after" cocktail effectively wipe out HIV before it takes hold, and should it be more widely available?
Feb 20, 03: Africa's AIDS epidemic may not have been fueled mainly by sexual transmission of the HIV virus, but by unsafe medical injections and blood transfusions, a team of international researchers said. A team of eight experts from three countries who reviewed data on HIV infection in Africa estimate only about a third of adult cases are sexually transmitted. They said health care practices, especially contaminated medical injections, could also be a major cause.
. . BUT: "The idea that dirty needles or blood transfusions are the main route for HIV transmission in Africa today, flies in the face of experience on the ground", said Dr. Chris Ouma, head of health programs at the charity ActionAid Kenya. "In Kenya, medical procedures have largely been made safe but still HIV infections continue to rise."
Feb 20, 03: An Environmental Protection Agency report warning that emissions of mercury by coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources poses an increasing health danger to young children has been delayed for nine months, the Wall Street Journal reported. It says there is mounting evidence that mercury is collecting in the blood of women of child-bearing age.
Feb 19, 03: Whether you smoke a cigarette or use cocaine, certain nerve endings in the brain are tweaked in the same way, which suggests there may be a universal way to treat addiction, U.S. researchers said. In fact, alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, morphine and nicotine all make brain cells hypersensitive, a team at Stanford University in California reported. The work could eventually lead to a universal drug to battle addiction.
Feb 13, 03: A harmless virus that seems to infect millions of people without causing symptoms may help slow the deadly progress of the AIDS virus, researchers said. The virus, called GBV-C, may block one of the cellular doorways used by the AIDS virus to infect cells, researchers told a meeting of HIV experts. More study may lead to new ways to treat the virus, which infects 36 million people worldwide.
. . The good news is that many HIV patients in the United States seem to be infected with the virus. The findings may help explain why some people survive for decades without serious complications from the virus. Researchers discovered GBV-C in 1995. They also called it hepatitis G, but that name has been dropped because, unlike hepatitis viruses, this one does not seem to damage the liver. .Like the AIDS virus, GBV infects immune system cells called lymphocytes. ."We found that men who were persistently positive for GBV-C were 2.5 times more likely to survive."
. . Eleven years later, 75 percent of the men who had persistent GBV-C infections were still alive against 39 percent of those who never were infected with GBV.
It is not clear whether GBV directly interferes with HIV or helps drug cocktails used to fight AIDS work better. More studies are planned.
. . GBV is found in 1 percent to 2 percent of healthy blood donors, but up to 40 percent of people who have HIV also have a GBV infection.One test the researchers are considering is deliberately infecting HIV patients with GBV.
Feb 10, 03: A gel containing antibodies to the AIDS virus protected female monkeys against infection in an experiment that suggests such a product might work as an alternative to condoms for people, researchers reported. "Only three of 12 animals ... became infected", they wrote in their report. In contrast, 12 of 13 animals given a sham treatment became infected.
. . Half of all new cases of HIV infection are in women. This would help protect women in areas where they have little power to demand condoms, & in areas where they're too expensive.
Feb 18, 03 update: 64 dead.
. . Feb 7, 03: Six people have died in the past week from the deadly Ebola virus in the northwest of Congo Republic, the second outbreak there in two years, a senior health official said. The victims died in Kelle, 440 miles north of the capital Brazzaville, near the border with Gabon which was also hit by an Ebola outbreak last year.
Ebola is spread by infected body fluids and kills anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of its victims through massive internal bleeding, depending on the strain.
Jan 24, 03: Pharmacia Corp. of the U.S. said it had reached an agreement with a non-profit Dutch group to allow generic drugmakers to sell cheaper versions of its AIDS drug in poor countries. The tie-up with the International Dispensary Association Foundation (IDA) is the latest example of pharmaceutical companies bowing to pressure to increase access to life-saving HIV/AIDS treatments, particularly in Africa.
. . But the move got mixed reviews from AIDS activists who pointed out the drug, Rescriptor, was not a leading treatment for the killer disease and was less convenient to take than rival products.
Most smokers in Europe say they'd find it easier to give up sex for a month than cigarettes, according to a survey. Nearly 80 percent of British smokers, almost 70 percent in the Netherlands, France and Germany and more than 55 percent in Belgium and Spain would forgo sex rather than live without cigarettes for a month.
. . Fear of health problems was the biggest motivator to quit, followed by concerns for their families and the cost of cigarettes.
. . "Smoking kills half of all lifetime smokers."
Dec 26, 02: A dramatic rise in syphilis cases has been reported among gay and bisexual men in Los Angeles, leading the largest U.S. AIDS health care organization to accuse health officials of ignoring the outbreak.
Dec 17, 02: SCARY!! Birds may be able to carry and spread the Ebola virus, a deadly African germ that has mystified doctors, U.S. researchers said. They found that the outer protein shell of Ebola is similar to those of several viruses carried by birds.
. . Ebola kills an estimated 70 percent of victims, depending on the strain. It is a hemorrhagic fever, causing widespread tissue destruction and bleeding. There is no cure. It killed several hundred people in Congo Republic, the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon since it was first identified in 1976.
. . Scientists believe it is passed from some animal to people but have not been able to find the animal "reservoir" for the virus. Birds are known reservoirs of other viruses that infect people, including influenza.
11-02: It started as a mysterious infection among gay white men, but over two decades, HIV/AIDS has exploded into the worst epidemic humanity has ever faced and is now afflicting as many women as men.
. . Ominously, the disease is also starting to take its toll on agricultural output and is worsening the food crisis in some of the world's poorest areas, according to the U.N.
. . AIDS will have killed 3.1 million people by the end of this year, five million more have been infected with the deadly virus and 42 million people, half of them women, are living with it.
. . In Africa, 58 percent of all people living with HIV are women.
. . An estimated one million people in China are infected with HIV and unless effective responses take hold, the number could reach 10 million people --equivalent to the entire population of Belgium-- by the end of this decade, the report says.
. . 3.97 million Indians had the virus, the second highest figure in the world (after South Africa). Unless Chinese authorities responded rapidly with education and other prevention measures, some 10 million people in that country could contract HIV by the end of 2010.
Nov 13, 02: Epidemiologists found the West Nile virus in three farm-raised Florida alligators, marking the first time the potentially deadly virus has been found in a U.S. reptile species.
Nov 6, 02: [under "new" because it could be a future "wildfire-disease", as the population rises.] A couple visiting from New Mexico are believed to have contracted bubonic plague and if confirmed this would constitute the first case of the illness in New York City in more than 100 years, health officials said.
. . The two are "being evaluated for plague", Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden told a news conference. The male patient, 53, is a presumptive positive for the illness and is in critical condition, he said. The female patient, 47, is in stable condition. There is no risk to New Yorkers, as bubonic plague is not contagious. The source of the infection is "believed to be rodents or rodent fleas near their home. About a dozen cases reported each year in the United States, mostly in the rural Southwest.
Nov 6, 02: U.S. officials have approved OraSure Technologies Inc.'s OraQuick HIV test, a blood test that delivers results in as little as 20 minutes.
Nov 8, 02: [an old disease, but newly widespread.] A severe outbreak of the fly-borne parasitic disease Kala Azar is devastating some southern Sudanese communities exhausted by malnutrition and war, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF --Doctors w/o Borders) said.
. . Kala Azar, or Visceral Leishmaniasis, is transmitted by the tiny sand fly and attacks people weakened by hunger and fatigue. Fatal if untreated, the disease disrupts the liver and spleen, causing fever and severe weight loss and an enlarged spleen.
High levels of a flavor enhancer common in oriental and processed food can cause serious eye damage and blindness in rats and possibly humans. Scientists at Hirosaki University in Japan said rats fed a diet high in monosodium glutamate, or MSG, suffered vision problems and had thinner retinas than other animals.
Oct 23, 02: Children under 16 should avoid taking aspirin because of links to a rare brain and liver disorder, Britain's drug watchdog said. They said Reye's syndrome, a metabolic disorder, has affected 18 British children taking aspirin for fever since 1986. Researchers reported in 1999 that the condition had virtually disappeared in the United States after parents were told not give aspirin to children recovering from flu or chicken pox.
Oct 17, 02: NYU School of Medicine researchers report that a chemical in cigarette smoke causes mutations in a gene called RAS that are commonly associated with many human cancers.
Oct 17, 02: The body's basic building blocks, proteins are made by cells following instructions laid out in the genes. But like a cardboard box, a protein must be folded to function and they sometimes get folded into the wrong shape.
The misshapen proteins, or prions, can convert other proteins to their deadly form just by touching them. In the normal course of events, a cell will recognize this and cause it to be broken up. But researchers discovered that if the misfolded prions are not broken up quickly enough, they accumulate and alter the cell's metabolism, killing it. In the brain, this kills neurons.
. . "Once the cell dies, PrPsc (the misfolded prions) will be released into the environment to infect neighbor cells". The agents linked with mad cow disease can spread if only one does not get removed when it goes bad, researchers said.
Sept 25, 02: Solid evidence is mounting that drinking tea can prevent cell damage that leads to cancer, heart disease and perhaps other ills, scientists said. It may soon be time to add tea to the list of fruits and vegetables that experts urge Americans to eat as often as possible to reduce their risk of disease, the researchers told a meeting sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Tea Council, the American Cancer Society and other groups.
. . Blumberg said tea is loaded with phytochemicals --a wide range of molecules that can act as antioxidants. Such compounds counteract the damage done to DNA cells by free radicals --charged particles produced by sunlight, chemicals, many foods and simply the stress of day-to-day living. Damaged DNA is the first step to cancer, and is also associated with heart disease. Vitamins such as A and C are antioxidants, but so are compounds such as the catechins found in tea.
. . "We found that their blood lipids, when they drank tea compared to the placebo beverage, had up to 10 percent lowering of low density lipoprotein, the 'bad' cholesterol", Judd said. "What we found was a 25 percent decrease in the green tea group", she said. No changes were seen in the people who drank black tea or water.
Sept 25, 02: Stem cell research, which many scientists believe will some day transform medicine beyond recognition, is "crawling like a caterpillar" due to strict limits on stem cell research imposed by President Bush last year, top scientists told the U.S. Congress. One scientist said he left the country to work in Britain, while others complain they cannot get hold of "legal" batches of the cells to begin their research.
. . Scientists hope to learn to manipulate them to use to treat diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer's, as tissue transplants and perhaps even to grow entire new organs. Daley would especially like to try to use cloning technology to make stem cells. This would allow a patient to be treated with cells taken from his or her own body --overcoming barriers of immune rejection. Competing bills pending in the Senate would either allow this so-called therapeutic cloning, or outlaw it. A bill banning it passed in the House last year.
Sept 9, 02: Obesity threatens to reverse gains in longevity made during the last 100 years and in some cases could result in parents outliving their children, a British nutritionist said. An estimated 28 percent of people in the United States and 20 percent in Europe are obese and many more are overweight, making obesity the fastest growing health epidemic of the past two decades.
Oct 9, 02: People with the inherited skin condition eczema lack natural antibiotics that ward off many skin infections, researchers reported, a finding that could lead to a cream to treat the ailment that affects millions. Their skin is sluggish in producing small chemicals called peptides that thwart bacteria, viruses and fungi. A cream that contains the missing peptides might someday be an effective treatment against eczema. Existing antibiotic creams only thwart bacteria.
Oct 2, 02: Americans on average face a 1 in 2,100 risk of developing cancer in their lifetimes from breathing pollutants in the outdoor air. The vast majority of the airborne pollution cancer risk is linked to diesel engines, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Oct 2, 02: Scientists opened a new front in the sluggish war against malaria by announcing they had mapped the genome of two bugs --the parasite that causes the disease and the mosquito that carries it. They hope their accomplishment -- the fruit of a team effort involving 150 scientists in nine countries -- will lead to the development of new drugs to fight the disease, vaccines to prevent it, and pesticides to kill the mosquitoes.
. . Malaria, which infects 300 million to 500 million people a year, kills between 1 million and 2.7 million. Virtually all are children, mostly infants, and most live in Africa. In the worst-hit areas, 40 percent of babies and toddlers die of the disease. This works out to an average of 2,700 children a day
. . With 5,300 genes, the Plasmodium falciparum genome is one of the smallest sequenced so far. The human genome has about 35,000 genes and the Anopheles gambiae mosquito genome has nearly 14,000 genes.
Oct 1, 02: The health of polar bears and the indigenous peoples of the Arctic is at serious risk from man-made toxins being carried there by air and sea, a new report showed. It's felt the most by those at the top of the food chain. "Some Arctic people are among the most highly exposed people on the globe because contaminants accumulate in their foods." People with increased risk mainly lived in areas with high intake of marine mammals, such as the Inuit, and those with high intake of some fish species."Levels of PCBs in some wildlife are high enough to cause subtle effects on the immune system and this may even be true for children in some areas. Other PCB-risks include effects on brain development and reproduction", the group said.
Oct 1, 02: If flies are happy gorging on dung and rotting flesh, they must surely have powerful built-in resistance to infection. Following this theory, a team of Australian scientists is working to produce revolutionary new antibiotics, made from flies and other creepy crawlies, to replace the antibiotics that infections are rapidly developing resistance against. One now has a patent on antibiotics from bull ants, a large aggressive Australian ant. Other spots they're searching include spider webs & nectar. Entocosm says four million species of insects are a virtually untouched potential source of antibiotics, anti-cancer agents, blood thinners, and other therapeutic substances.
Sept 27, 02: AIDS researchers said they had identified a long sought-after substance that allows a small number of people to naturally live with the AIDS virus for decades without ever getting ill. They hope they can use the compound, consisting of three proteins called alpha-defensins, to design better drugs to fight the HIV virus. "This is not going to be the ultimate solution but it is another weapon we can use in our arsenal against HIV.
. . Long term non-progressors are not immune to HIV. Their CD8 cells cut the activity of HIV by between 40 and 60 percent, and eventually they do start to become ill. Their immune system also makes compounds called beta-chemokines, which also help block HIV.
Sept 27, 02: Preliminary results show less than half as many pills of an experimental AIDS drug work at least as well as the most widely prescribed protease inhibitor in patients not previously treated with other drugs, researchers said. The drug, being developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline Plc, is a second-generation protease inhibitor known as 908.
Sept 27, 02: Scientists have created compounds that may be able to block the virus that causes AIDS and at the same time keep the body from sabotaging its own immune response, according to early- stage research. So-called fusion inhibitors, designed to stop the virus from getting into cells in the first place, are the most advanced new HIV drug class in development. Currently approved AIDS medicines attack HIV only after it has entered a cell.
He cautioned that the work is still very early-stage -- the peptides have yet to be tested in animals -- and permission for trials in humans will be sought within two years.
Oct 10, 02: The Inuit, an indigenous people of the Arctic, will stick to a traditional diet including whale blubber despite mounting pollution from industrial toxins. The Inuit have hunted marine mammals for thousands of years but their health and livelihood are now threatened by climate change and man-made toxins. Western-style foods do not give all the nutrition needed to live in the harsh Arctic environment.
. . The Inuit in Canada and Greenland have the world's highest exposure to several persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and mercury because of their high intake of fatty tissues such as the blubber of marine mammals. New research has revealed that high intake of marine mammals leads to higher levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are mixtures of chemicals and potentially cancer causing.
. . Signs of climate change are increasingly apparent in the Arctic, which is already suffering from a thinning ozone layer. "Some of our communities are eroding into the oceans in front of our eyes because of the decrease in the multi-layered ice, which is allowing for larger storms to roll in", Smith said. The reduction of the permanent ice was also affecting food resources because it was harder to hunt and animals were changing behavior, particularly polar bears.
Oct 11, 02: Type 1 diabetes patients may be able to avoid the need for daily insulin shots through transplants of insulin-producing stem cells, but the procedure faces problems finding the cells and dealing with immune- system rejection, researchers said.
Oct 11, 02: The World Health Organization urged countries to reach a global deal on curbing tobacco use, warning that hundreds of thousands more were dying each year from smoking than previously thought. It had revised its annual death toll for smoking related diseases to 4.9 million people from 4.2 million."This means our estimate for 10 million deaths a year by 2030 is also probably an underestimate."
Oct 10, 02: Gene therapy worked to stop the damage of Parkinson's disease in rats, and the experiment was so successful that the operation will now be tried on a few people, researchers said. In Parkinson's, which affects up to 1.5 million Americans, brain cells that make an important message-carrying chemical called dopamine are destroyed.
Sept 21, 02: A two-week-old baby in the Los Angeles area has already been exposed to more toxic air pollution than the U.S. government deems acceptable as a cancer risk over a lifetime, according to a report on Monday by an environmental campaign group. In Los Angeles, an infant would have reached the EPA's one chance in one million limit of contracting cancer from contaminants in 12 days.
Sept 11, 02: Cloned mice have hundreds of abnormal genes, which explains why so many cloned animals die at or before birth and proves it would be irresponsible to clone a human being, scientists said. The process of cloning introduces the genetic mutations, and there seems no immediate way around the problem.
. . But so-called therapeutic cloning, which uses cloning technology to make human cells for use in medical treatments, would be safe, he said. "In therapeutic cloning, you don't form an embryo", Jaenisch said, noting it went to an early stage of development in which a ball of about 100 cells is formed. "In cloning most, if not all, problems arise during embryonic development", he added.
Sept 11, 02: A British firm pioneering stem cells as a treatment for brain damage said it believed it had cracked a production problem which has delayed development of the controversial technology. ReNeuron Holdings Plc, Europe's first listed stem cell company, now expects to start human trials in 2004 -- three years later than originally hoped.
. . Plans to treat Parkinson's disease and stroke by injecting fetal stem cells into patients' brains were put on hold last year following the discovery that cell lines became genetically unstable after being recreated many times. Now, ReNeuron, which faces competition from rival groups in the United States, has found a way round the problem.
Sept 11, 02: Expectant mothers should avoid nicotine --even nicotine chewing gum-- because it raises the risk of crib death, a new study shows, suggesting that it is not enough for pregnant women to give up smoking. Scientists have long known that babies of smoking mothers have a much higher risk of crib death than infants of non-smokers.
Sept 9, 02: Singapore is waging war on mosquitoes after a jump in the number of dengue fever cases and the deaths of three people in June and July. Symptoms of dengue, caused by one of four closely related viruses, are similar to a severe case of influenza. The condition is seldom deadly, but dengue hemorrhagic fever is a potentially fatal complication. The World Health Organization estimates there may be 50 million cases of dengue infection each year, with 2.5 billion people at risk.
Sept 4, 02: A vaccine against ricin, one of the deadliest toxins known, works in mice and may work to protect people in case of a bioterrorist attack, U.S. researchers said. The researchers, at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, came up with the vaccine as part of their work using the potent toxin to fight cancer.
Aug 30, 02: A three-year study has found that radio emissions from mobile phones do not trigger the growth of tumors in mice and therefore probably do not do so in humans either, Australian researchers said Friday.
Aug 23, 02: Swedish scientists have found a tiny, mysterious particle in the spinal marrow fluid which may be a new form of life and which could help explain the cause of schizophrenia. "They may be involved in the development of the disease or may result from the disease process in brains of schizophrenic patients", the researchers said in an abstract of the study published.
. . He said this was just one theory, and it was still uncertain what form of life the particles, which are bigger than ordinary viruses but smaller than bacteria, represented. There are bacteria, viruses, and prions --(largest first).
. . The study found spherical particles -- only 100,000th of a millimeter in size -- in the spinal fluid of 20 of the 22 patients with schizophrenia against only two of the 38 controls."They are more like something like the prion which is causing mad cow disease -- but it took 15 years until it was found out what that really was." He said it was too early to speculate whether the particles were a cause of schizophrenia or whether the disease caused them.
Aug 21, 02: Millions of Africans and African-Americans carry a version of a gene that raises their risk of abnormal heart rhythms, which can be deadly, researchers reported. The gene variant, which seems to be exclusive to people of African descent, might be used in the future to screen people most at risk -- who could then avoid certain drugs that can activate the arrhythmia, the researchers said. This variant by itself doesn't cause disease.
Aug 21, 02: Chimpanzees may have survived a catastrophic virus epidemic similar to HIV some two million years ago, which could explain why they are now immune to AIDS. Chimpanzees have only half as many variations of certain anti-virus immune system genes as humans. Chimps normally have about five times as much variation in their genes as people, so the fewer variations in the MHC I virus-fighting genes suggests chimps may have been attacked by a virus that killed all but those with the right genes.
Aug 21, 02: . U.S. scientists made a breakthrough which they believe could thwart one of the most nightmarish forms of terrorism --an attack with antibiotic-resistant biological weapons. The scientists say they have found a form of treatment that may make it virtually impossible for anthrax germs to mutate into a resistant strain.
. . Similar methods could be used to fight a host of other infections, opening a new approach to the treatment of disease, scientists said.
. . Cleverly, they used a protein produced by a bacteria-killing virus. It was the first time scientists had treated bacteria with the proteins used by bacteria- killing viruses, which the team said could provide "an enormous untapped pool" of new treatments for bacterial diseases of all kinds.
. . More good news: they said they had tried and failed to breed bacteria strains resistant to lysin, despite using methods that easily bred bacteria resistant to conventional antibiotics.
. . And more: the scientists also found that within seconds of being attacked by the lysin, the anthrax bacteria produced an easily detected chemical called ATP. That could make it far easier to confirm and respond to an anthrax attack.
Aug 19, 02: AIDS researchers reported they had designed a vaccine that they believe may do what no other vaccine has done before -- protect people from infection with the virus. So far, the team at the Institute of Virology at the University of Maryland has only tested monkeys. And they note that people trying to design a vaccine against the AIDS virus have repeatedly failed.
Aug 19, 02: Some people may be genetically predisposed to have a deadly reaction to West Nile virus, which has killed 11 people in the United States this year, French researchers reported. Eighty percent of people who are infected show no symptoms at all, but 20 percent of those infected develop a fever, which can progress to encephalitis. This can be deadly and often leaves life-long damage in those who survive.
Aug 19, 02: British scientists have begun tests in Gambia on a new type of vaccine for malaria that could one day save millions of lives. Some 360 Gambian adults will be given shots. Half will receive the malaria vaccine, with the other half given a rabies shot to compare the effects. At present, there is no effective, widely-used vaccine for the tropical disease spread by mosquitoes.
. . Unlike conventional vaccines, which "teach" the body's immune system to recognize and destroy a parasite that causes an infection, the new vaccine would teach the body to recognize its own infected cells. Kill the cell and the parasite at the same time.
Six cases of dengue fever have been reported in Ecuador's pristine Galapagos islands --"a place farther from any other place than any other place". If it gets there....
Aug 3, 02: A recent study in the British medical publication Lancet, calculated that for every year a woman breast-feeds, it cuts her risk of breast cancer by 4.3 percent.
Early Aug, 02: Research has shown that zinc supplements improve infant growth and protect young children in poor countries from infectious diseases but scientists at the Center for International Child Health in London said they also have negative effects. In a study of 168 children in Bangladesh, they found that babies whose mothers took zinc supplements during pregnancy had lower scores on mental and psychomotor tests than children whose mothers had been given a placebo.
Aug 1, 02: Britain's rat population has grown by nearly one quarter since 1998 and is now estimated at 60 million, two million more than the human population. On average, a rat can give birth every 24-28 days, and just a single pair of rats can produce a colony of 2,000 a year. Around 200 Britons a year contract Weil's Disease --an infection which can lead to kidney or liver failure and eventually death and which is carried in rat's urine.
July 29, 02: Air pollution worsens heart disease by cutting off circulation to the heart, Finnish researchers reported in a study that helps explain why polluted environments aggravate not only asthma but heart conditions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 60,000 people a year die in the United States alone from particulate air pollution --the kind caused when small particles of smoke pervade the air.
The crows no longer caw raucously in the early mornings outside the neat homes of northwest Washington. They are gone, hundreds of them apparent victims of West Nile virus.
. . West Nile has killed 18 people since its appearance in the United States in 1999, and caused notable infections in 161. Two-thirds of the patients have been over 60, many with other illnesses making them susceptible to the infection, which can cause encephalitis or meningitis -- inflammations of the brain and spinal cord.
. . Last year, 66 people became ill and nine died --but in the average healthy person, the virus causes no symptoms, or perhaps a vaguely flu-like feeling. Scientists predicted the virus would spread easily. It was first reported in Uganda in 1937 and now common across much of Africa, the Middle East and Europe, and the Pacific. Carried by migrating birds, it could become a permanent resident of the entire continental United States.
. . There are eight new states this year and many in the West, including Texas, Nebraska, North Dakota and Manitoba.
July 26, 02: El Salvador declared a national emergency to battle a dengue epidemic that so far has claimed nine lives since January in the tiny Central American nation. Health authorities said El Salvador has seen 3,203 cases of dengue this year, 206 of them the potentially lethal hemorrhagic dengue strain. Dengue is transmitted by mosquitoes. Dengue epidemics have also broken out in neighboring Honduras and Guatemala.
The vaccine must fight against all four strains of dengue fever. Once an individual is infected, he is only immune to that strain. Although reporting is sketchy, the WHO estimates there are around 50 million cases of the infection each year.
July 16, 02: The more sun you get, the higher your risk of skin cancer, U.S. researchers said in a report they claim is the first to show an individual's cumulative risk of melanoma. Many studies have linked sun exposure with skin cancer, but the team at the National Cancer Institute said their research was the first to show the intensity of sunlight a person receives over a lifetime is directly related to melanoma risk.
July 6, 02: Researchers have developed a vaccine that delays the onset of a mad-cow-like disease in mice. Though preliminary, the results could lead to vaccines against scrapie in sheep, BSE in cattle and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans. These brain diseases, called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, are thought to be caused by prions. These proteins become pathogenic when they change shape.
July 5, 02: Thailand will hold the world's biggest HIV vaccine trial, lasting five years and involving 16,000 people, a government health official said.
the trial should begin by the end of the year. The vaccine has already been tested for safety and this large-scale trial is the final stage. If successful, the vaccine could be licensed and would give life-long protection against the virus that causes AIDS, he said.
July 5, 02: South Africa's highest court ordered the government today to stop blocking the universal provision at public hospitals of an anti-AIDS drug to help prevent mother-to-child transmission of the disease. AIDS activists who successfully forced the government's hand said they would begin immediately to push for the nationwide supply of life-prolonging anti-retrovirals, in a country with the highest number of HIV-positive people in the world.
July 5, 02: U.S. health officials said they approved a new sweetener, neotame, that is about 7,000 to 13,000 times sweeter than sugar. The Food and Drug Administration said neotame, a water soluble, white crystalline powder, can be used as a tabletop sweetener as well as in cooking and food processing.
July 5, 02: African strains of the AIDS virus may have mutations that help them develop resistance to drugs more quickly, researchers said. The report, published in the journal Biochemistry, may help explain why drugs stop working effectively in African HIV. The virus has evolved into several variants, called HIV-A through HIV-H, with HIV-A and HIV- C the most common in Africa. The current HIV drugs used in cocktail form to control the virus were mostly developed and tested against HIV-B found commonly in the United States and western Europe.
July 4, 02: Another 45 million people will become infected with the AIDS virus in the next eight years, researchers predicted on Thursday but said this number could be slashed if good prevention programs were put into place right away. The Lancet medical journal, in a tie-in with a United Nations report, predicts 70 million people will die of AIDS in the next 20 years. It said more than 40 million are currently infected.
July 4, 02: AIDS has already killed nearly 22 million people but a leading expert warned that the global epidemic hasn't peaked yet and the virus may never be eradicated. "It is unlikely we will have a vaccine that will be 100 percent effective and that will really stop all transmission. I think we have to accept that this will be part of the human condition and that it may never go away. We need to start reasoning in terms of generations."
July 2, 02: AIDS will kill 70 million people over the next 20 years unless rich nations step up their efforts to curb the disease, the United Nations warned in a report showing the epidemic is still in its early stages.
More than 40 million people worldwide have AIDS or are infected with HIV, the virus that causes the disease, up from 34 million two years ago, and infection rates are climbing. "We haven't reached the peak of the AIDS epidemic yet."
. . AIDS killed a record 3 million people last year --2.2 million in Africa alone. The disease, which has killed more than 20 million since its discovery in 1981, has so far created 14 million orphans. Three million of the 40 million people now infected are children under 15 years of age. In Zimbabwe, one-third of adults are infected, up from one-quarter two years ago. Botswana, the worst-hit country, now has a staggering 39 percent of adults infected with HIV or AIDS, up from 36 percent two years ago. Because of AIDS, life expectancy in Botswana has dropped below 40 for the first time since 1950.
June 27, 02: The United Nations said China was on the brink of an HIV/AIDS catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in one of its harshest assessments yet of the country's efforts to stem the spread of the deadly virus. By the end of last year, 800,000 to 1.5 million Chinese were infected with HIV.
June 28, 02: The World Health Organization (WHO) said that spermicides used by millions of people worldwide do not provide the protection against the HIV virus and other sexually transmitted diseases previously thought. Experts agreed that nonoxynol-9, contained in most spermicides and sometimes added to male condoms as a lubricant, may actually increase the risk of HIV infection in women having frequent sex, WHO said.
Jun 26, 02: - [old disease, but new cause] Deaths and deformities caused by the fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the world worst civil nuclear accident, may have extended beyond the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, British scientists suspect. They said the cloud of radioactivity it sent over Europe could have increased infant deaths and birth defects in England and Wales in the three years afterwards. John Urquhart, a researcher based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in north eastern England, estimated that at least 200 more children than normal died during those three years. "The odds that the overlap occurred by chance are 1 in 200."
June 22, 02: Most men living in developing nations around the world have changed their behavior to reduce their risk of getting AIDS, but far fewer women have done so, according to a new U.N. report. A survey of 39 developing nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean found that the vast majority of men -- ranging from 60 to 90 percent, depending on the country -- had altered how they behave to avoid AIDS. But in only half the countries had a majority of women made a behavioral change. Some 40 million people in the world today either have AIDS or are infected with HIV, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
June 20, 02: Two newly-published studies show the potential of stem cells in medical treatments and even organ transplants and, scientists said, show why research should not be limited despite moves in the U.S. Congress to do so. One study shows that embryonic stem cells, taken from a newly fertilized egg, can be used to create the kind of cells that would treat Parkinson's disease, an incurable brain disorder, and a second found bone marrow cells can be coaxed into forming a wide variety of different cells in the body.
June 14, 02: Australian scientists have used stem cells to grow an organ in mice critical to the immune system, saying the technique could be used to restore the human immune system in AIDS -HIV and cancer patients. "We are very confident that this work will be able to progress to humans within the next three to five years", said Jason Gill from Monash University Medical School.
early 02: Workers at a microwave popcorn plant have developed a rare lung disease that investigators believe was caused by breathing vapors from artificial butter flavoring. Four of the workers need lung transplants. Investigators suspect a chemical in the "butter" flavoring, possibly diacetyl.
. . Altogether, eight employees at the Gilster-Mary Lee Corp. plant in Jasper, Mo have developed bronchiolitis obliterans --a type of irreversible lung damage-- after being exposed to the flavoring while mixing and packaging popcorn, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said.
Doctors who investigated for NIOSH said the problem appears to be limited to workers who inhaled large amounts of butter flavoring vapors wafting from big vats. They said there is no danger to people who microwave the popcorn and eat it at home.
May 16, 02: The U.S. government joined forces with a tiny Dutch biotechnology company on Thursday to develop a vaccine against Ebola, the virus that bleeds people to death and which could be a powerful weapon in bioterrorism.
. . Crucell NV said it would develop the vaccine together with the U.S. government's major medical research body, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and could test it on humans within two years and sell it by 2008.
. . The Ebola virus causes Ebola fever, one of the deadliest diseases known to man and for which there is no cure. Victims' internal organs literally disintegrate and they die rapidly, bleeding from every orifice. Ebola spreads like wildfire.
Early Feb, 02 --just before the Carnival!: At least seven people have died in Rio de Janeiro of hemorrhagic dengue fever amid an outbreak of the mosquito-borne viral disease, and the number of infected has more than doubled since last week, authorities said.
. . Among the dengue cases in the metropolitan area of Brazil's tourist mecca, 46 showed the potentially deadly hemorrhagic strain, said a spokeswoman for Rio municipal health secretariat.
. . The number of infected people totaled 2,338, she said. State health authorities confirmed 6,676 cases of dengue overall statewide, including 119 hemorrhagic cases, but said the outbreak was not yet considered an epidemic.
Feb 8, 02: Earth's protective ozone layer thinned considerably over parts of Europe for three days in January, highlighting a growing problem of mini ozone holes over the continent that could threaten health --human & crop. Such holes occured in Nov, '99 and Nov, '01.
Over Antarctica, the seasonal hole reached record size in 2000.
Jan 28, 02: Men who have higher levels of polluting chemicals known as PCBs in their bodies are slightly more likely to father boys, researchers said.
. . PCBs are endocrine disruptors --chemicals that act like
hormones. The study used information from studies of men and women who liked to fish in the Great Lakes, which are polluted with a
range of chemicals. 57 percent were boys, which is a slight increase of the normal trend of about 51 percent.
. . The study did not detect that the PCB levels of *mothers affected the number.
Jan 22, 02: Social standing --being dominant or subordinate-- plays a vital role in determining susceptibility to drug use, in a study using monkeys, scientists said. Macaque monkeys deemed to be
subordinate in small groups of the animals were much more
likely to give themselves doses of cocaine in a laboratory
setting than dominant monkeys.
Jan 25, 02: Living near a landfill can raise the risk of having a child with birth defects such as Downs Syndrome by as much as 40%, researchers said --but they admitted they are not sure why.
Jan 17, 02: The chimpanzee version of the AIDS virus appears to be extremely rare in wild chimps, which suggests the apes evolved a way to deal with the killer virus generations ago, researchers said. They said their study confirmed earlier theories that AIDS
passed to humans from chimps in Central Africa. "The closest relatives of the human AIDS virus are those infecting chimps in West Central and not in East Africa."
Jan 8, 02: High levels of chlorination byproducts (CPBs) in drinking water put pregnant women at a higher risk for miscarriages or having children with birth defects, according to a new study. Texas was worst on a statewide basis.
. . Chlorine also reacts with organic matter, including sewage and animal waste from run-off, to form harmful CBPs. "And, they should take shorter showers and baths, since CBPs can be in inhaled or absorbed through the skin", she said.
Nov 15, 01: A new deadly disease is stalking Britain's pigs, threatening the lives of animals which just months ago escaped slaughter during a foot-and-mouth epidemic and swine fever outbreak, veterinarians said. The disease, PMWS (Post-weaning Multi-systematic Wasting Sydrome) which takes two forms, has spread across 40 percent of the England's pig herd and is expected to kill thousands more animals in what vets said could be "the final blow" for dispirited farmers.
. . The spread of the disease, which can cause sudden
death in pigs or leave them listless and gaunt, has already
reached epidemic proportions and has no known cure.
Over 41--perhaps 100--people have died in Saudi Arabia and
as many in neighboring Yemen, from an outbreak of Rift Valley Fever, the Saudi Health Ministry and Yemeni officials said (Sept 23rd).
. . Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates banned livestock imports from some African countries to prevent the spread of the disease, which is transmitted from infected animals to humans through contact or by mosquitoes.
. . 24 people had officially died in Saudi Arabia, 70 were in hospital and 19 had been released after hospital treatment.
Zimbabwe -- where 25% of the population of 11.3 million is infected with HIV -- doesn't compare to Thailand, where it's 2 percent of the population, yet is better known here.
AIDS won't stop the explosion (tho Ebola could, if it really gets loose). In Botswana, where HIV is 36%, doesn't much impede the 37% pop increase predicted for 2050.
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