Africa intensifies battle against mpox as ‘alarming’ outbreaks continue
Researchers and public health officials in Africa are intensifying their battle against mpox, a neglected infectious disease that long has circulated on the continent and suddenly gained notoriety in 2022 when it started to spread rapidly in Europe and North America. At a meeting last week in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, scientists from there and nine other affected African countries reviewed an alarming rise of cases on the continent, discussed plans to improve mpox surveillance and introduce vaccination, and launched an African-led research consortium.
The meeting, convened by the Africa Centres for Disease Co...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 19, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Scientists Develop Vaccine Against Lethal Xylazine, Often Mixed With Street Drugs
MONDAY, April 8, 2024 (HealthDay news) -- A new vaccine might be able to block the toxic effects of the animal tranquilizer xylazine, which is being added to illicit drugs and increasing overdose risk.The vaccine trains the immune system to attack... (Source: Drugs.com - Daily MedNews)
Source: Drugs.com - Daily MedNews - April 8, 2024 Category: General Medicine Source Type: news
U.S. dairy farm worker infected as bird flu spreads to cows in five states
Texas officials today issued a
“health alert”
about the first confirmed case of a human infection with a bird influenza virus that has found its ways into dairy cows. The worker developed conjunctivitis, a mild eye infection that frequently occurs when avian influenza viruses jump into humans.
The case is the latest surprise in the global march of the flu strain, a subtype of H5N1 known as clade 2.3.4.4b that has devastated wild birds and poultry around the world for more than two years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says it has confirmed that the virus has infected cattle at farms in...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 2, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
A Person in the U.S. Tested Positive for Bird Flu
In a rare case, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed on April 1 that a person in the U.S. has tested positive for avian influenza, also known as bird flu. Despite the positive test, however, the CDC says risk to the general public remains low.
Health officials have been tracking an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza since a new variant emerged and began killing birds on multiple continents in 2020. Sixty-seven countries reported outbreaks in 2022, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), followed by another 14 in 2023. Human cases, however, remain rare. Only 11 infectio...
Source: TIME: Health - April 1, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jamie Ducharme Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
News at a glance: Domestic U.S. postdocs, edited pig organs, and the Milky Way ’s central black hole
FUNDING
South Korea joins Horizon Europe
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (center) and EU leaders announced a research funding deal.
KYODO VIA AP IMAGES
South Korea will participate in the €95.5 billion ($104 billion) Horizon Europe R&D program, the first East Asian country to do so, the European Commission announced last week. South Korean scientists will compete for grants on an equal footing with their European counterparts; in return, South Korea will contribute an as-yet-undisclosed amount to the 7-year program, which expires in 20...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 28, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
The Challenge and Necessity of a Shared Reality
All animals, including humans, have limitations in how they find out about the world. And we humans invent instrumentation to correct for weaknesses in our perceptions of the world. The most basic weakness we have is that our perceptions don’t tell us everything about what’s going on with the world. So we need corrective devices. Some of us need spectacles. To see very distant things, like distant galaxies or planets, we use telescopes; to see very small things, like cells, we use microscopes. It’s hard for many of us to hear the difference between a single tone and a chord, so sound analyzers let us...
Source: TIME: Science - March 28, 2024 Category: Science Authors: Saul Perlmutter, John Campbell, and Robert MacCoun Tags: Uncategorized freelance Source Type: news
A treaty to prepare the world for the next pandemic hangs in the balance
“Me first”—that’s how Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), described the wealthy world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic when he kicked off negotiations for a global “pandemic treaty” in December 2021. Even before vaccines had proved safe and effective, rich countries had purchased enough doses to cover their entire population several times, whereas lower and middle-income countries had little or no vaccine. The pandemic treaty would address that searing inequity, Tedros vowed, along with many other problems identified during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the world bette...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 15, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Is the 100-year old TB vaccine a new weapon against Alzheimer ’s?
Studies suggest the BCG jab discovered a century ago could provide a cheap and effective way of boosting the immune system to protect people from developing the conditionScientific discoveries can emerge from the strangest places. In early 1900s France, the doctor Albert Calmette and the veterinarian Camille Gu érin aimed to discover how bovine tuberculosis was transmitted. To do so, they first had to find a way of cultivating the bacteria. Sliced potatoes – cooked with ox bile and glycerine – proved to be the perfect medium.As the bacteria grew, however, Calmette and Gu érin were surprised to find thateach generatio...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - February 25, 2024 Category: Science Authors: David Robson Tags: Alzheimer's Immunology Science Society Health Medical research Biochemistry and molecular biology Tuberculosis Vaccines and immunisation Dementia Source Type: news
Poised to be first widely consumed gene-edited animals, virus-resistant pigs trot toward market
Pigs, cattle, and other livestock with edited genes are still far from most dinner plates, but a U.K. company has taken a big step toward the supermarket by engineering several commercial breeds of pigs to be resistant to a virus that devastates the swine industry. The firm, Genus plc, hopes that by year’s end the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will formally approve the pigs for widespread human consumption, a first for a gene-edited animal.
Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist at the University of California, Davis, is cheering the news. “There’s no point having a pig getting sick and dying if t...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 23, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
A deadly viral illness is exploding in West Africa. Researchers are scrambling to figure out why
Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
Irrua, Nigeria, and Kenema, Sierra Leone—
Sitting on a bench outside the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital (ISTH) in Edo state in southwestern Nigeria in September 2023, Muhammed Luqman Dagana recounted his ordeal earlier in the year with Lassa fever, a deadly hemorrhagic disease of West Africa. At first the 33-year-old wasn’t alarmed—his fever, headache, body aches, and cough were innocuous enough. A doctor at his local clinic gave him antibiotics for typhoid fever and antimalarial drugs. But his symptoms persisted, so he tried anoth...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 22, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Penn and Nobel Prize winner Drew Weissman launch initiative to accelerate mRNA breakthroughs for animals
Among the first projects under the Penn Vet initiative will be developing mRNA vaccines for avian flu in poultry and viral infections in swine. (Source: bizjournals.com Health Care:Biotechnology headlines)
Source: bizjournals.com Health Care:Biotechnology headlines - February 21, 2024 Category: Biotechnology Authors: John George Source Type: news
Kenya: Antibiotic Use On Kenya's Dairy Farms Is Putting Consumers and Animals At Risk
[The Conversation Africa] Farmers often use antibiotics to keep their livestock healthy. They're sometimes used as "quick fixes", to avoid more costly management measures like regular disinfection, waste management, routine vaccination or provision of clean drinking water. (Source: AllAfrica News: Health and Medicine)
Source: AllAfrica News: Health and Medicine - February 21, 2024 Category: African Health Tags: East Africa Health and Medicine Kenya Science and Biotechnology Source Type: news
Lawmaker raises new flap over U.S.-funded virology research that critics call risky
A U.S. senator has thrown a political spotlight on yet another U.S.-Chinese research collaboration that critics suggest includes dangerous experiments that could create “superviruses” capable of sparking a pandemic. But contrary to assertions raised by Senator Joni Ernst (R–IA), none of the U.S. funding for the project goes to foreign researchers, and scientists who are part of the collaboration challenge other concerns she raised. And the U.S. funding agency she questioned this week issued a blistering response.
Prompted by information given to her by a group that opposes animal research, the White Coat Waste ...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 17, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
A Man Has Died From Alaskapox. Here ’s What We Know About the Virus
Alaska’s health department reports that the first person in the state has died from a recently discovered virus called Alaskapox.
The elderly man—who was immunocompromised due to cancer treatments—first noticed an unusual lesion in his right armpit last September, according to Alaska health officials who spoke to TIME about the case. He was prescribed antibiotics at his local emergency room on the Kenai Peninsula, but after multiple visits and a worsening, painful infection, he was transferred to a hospital in Anchorage.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
The patient tested positive for ...
Source: TIME: Health - February 13, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
