Recent News

By Region: North America

Princeton company working on new anthrax vaccine

(Newsworks.org) Michael Kurilla, director of biodefense research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said a vaccine that requires fewer injections would make effective treatment easier in a disaster. The vaccine now on the market requires …

January 4, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Countermeasures, and Research
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Call to censor flu studies draws fire

(Nature.com) Keim, who chairs the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), is reflecting on its unprecedented recommendation to censor two scientific papers describing how to make a more transmissible form of the H5N1 avian flu virus. …

January 4, 2012
| Filed under Europe, North America, Public Health, and Research
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Scientists crack medieval bone code

(Michigan State University) The scientists are the first to confirm the existence of brucellosis, an infectious disease still prevalent today, in ancient skeletal remains. The findings, which appear in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest brucellosis has been endemic to Albania since at least the Middle Ages. Although rare in the United States, brucellosis Read More »

January 4, 2012
| Filed under Europe, North America, Agents & Toxins, and Research
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New Findings About The Prion Protein And Its Interaction With The Immune System

(Medical News Today) Scrapie is a neurodegenerative disease which can function as a model for other diseases caused by an accumulation of proteins resulting in tissue malformations (proteinpathies), such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Many questions regarding these diseases still remain unanswered. A new doctoral study has uncovered a number of factors relating to the Read More »

January 3, 2012
| Filed under Europe, North America, Agriculture, and Research
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A Bird Flu Death in China. What it Means — and Doesn’t Mean

(Time) Science and news cycles sometimes converge in unhandy ways. That was the case on on January 1, when word came out of Shenzen, a Chinese city bordering Hong Kong, that a 39-year-old bus driver, surnamed Chen, had died of the H5N1 (or bird flu) virus. The deeply personal tragedy for Chen and his family Read More »