Decoding Sleeping Sickness Signals Could Aid Quest for Treatments
Key insights into how the parasites behind sleeping sickness boost their ability to spread could aid efforts to beat the disease. The finding resolves a decades-long puzzle about the behavior of the parasites, which are spread by the bite of the tsetse fly, and cause disease in people and animals. Researchers studied how parasites in…
How HIV DNA is Blocked from Entering the Cell Nucleus
Researchers Produce Six Antibodies to Combat Zika Virus
Advancement May Provide New Treatment for Cutaneous Leishmaniasis
Completely Human Platform for Testing Age-specific Vaccine Responses Unveiled
A team of scientists at Boston Children’s Hospital has developed the first modeling system for testing age-specific human immune responses to vaccines — outside the body. The practical, cost-effective new platform, using all human components, is expected to accelerate and de-risk the development, assessment and selection of vaccines. In a study published in Frontiers in…
How a Deadly Fungal Infection Shape-shifts into an Invasive Monster
FDA Approves New Drug to Treat Travelers’ Diarrhea
New Study Sheds Light on Norovirus Outbreaks, May Help Efforts to Develop a Vaccine
How Deady Pneumococcus Avoids Immune Defenses
Exosomes ‘Swarm’ to Protect Against Bacteria Inhaled Through the Nose
Bacteria are present in just about every breath of air we take in. How the airway protects itself from infection from these bacteria has largely remained a mystery — until now. When bacteria are inhaled, exosomes, or tiny fluid-filled sacs, are immediately secreted from cells that directly attack the bacteria and also shuttle protective antimicrobial…
Study Triggers Change in WHO Treatment Guidelines for Lymphatic Filariasis
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have shown that a single “cocktail” of three pill-based anti-parasite medications is significantly more effective at killing microscopic larval worms in people diagnosed with lymphatic filariasis, commonly known as elephantiasis, than other standard two-drug combinations previously used in the global effort to eliminate this infectious disease.…
Researchers Discover Potential Antidote to Botulism
Molecular Virologists Fight Influenza at the Molecular Level
Promising Steroid Treatment for Disease that Destroys Eye Tissue
Ocular inflammation uveitis is a serious disease that can destroy eye tissue and cause irreversible blindness. Fortunately, blindness and eye damage can be prevented by suppressing the immune system and treating the disease with corticosteroids, said Sai Chavala, MD, Professor of Pharmacology and Neuroscience and Director of Translational Research at the North Texas Eye Research Institute at…
Machine Learning IDs Antibiotic-resistance Genes in TB-causing Bacteria
Researchers Discover Novel Method to Block Immunosuppression in Cancer
Belgian research groups from the UCLouvain and WELBIO, VIB and Ghent University, and the biotechnology company argenx elucidated the three-dimensional structure of an assembly of proteins operating on cells that dampen immune responses. They also discovered how an antibody can block this assembly and the immunosuppression it induces downstream. Such an antibody could serve to…
FDA Approves First New Drug to Treat Influenza in Nearly 20 Years
The FDA has approved Genentech’s Xofluza (baloxavir marboxil) for the treatment of acute uncomplicated influenza (flu) in patients 12 years of age and older who have been symptomatic for no more than 48 hours. This is the first new antiviral flu treatment in nearly two decades. “With thousands of people getting the flu every year,…
Researchers Cure Drug-resistant Infections without Antibiotics
Biochemists, microbiologists, drug discovery experts and infectious disease doctors have teamed up in a new study that shows antibiotics are not always necessary to cure sepsis in mice. Instead of killing causative bacteria with antibiotics, researchers treated infected mice with molecules that block toxin formation in bacteria. Every treated mouse survived. The breakthrough study, published…
Researchers Recommend Universal Screening to Tackle Rise in Hep C
Physicians are encountering a growing number of younger patients who are testing positive for hepatitis C virus (HCV) fueled largely by the opioid crisis impacting communities around the country. That increase and more effective and tolerable drug regimens for HCV infection, means one-time universal screening of all adults for HCV is now cost effective and…
Researchers Engineer Dual Vaccine Against Anthrax, Plague
Researchers Hope Deadly MRSA Superbugs Take the Bait
Purdue University researchers are testing whether a light-active version of heme, the molecule responsible for transporting oxygen in blood circulation, may help people infected with MRSA. The research was published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Infectious Diseases in September. The World Health Organization identifies MRSA as one of about a dozen antibiotic “superbugs”…
