Certain kinds of viruses such as those that cause the common cold, SARS, hepatitis, and encephalitis, copy themselves using a unique mechanism, according to a team of Penn State University scientists that includes David...
Millions of people have been vaccinated for swine flu since the first outbreak in 2009. Pregnant women are among the high-risk groups strongly encouraged to receive the H1N1 vaccine. A new study in the Journal of the...
Culls of hundreds of thousands of chickens, turkeys and ducks to stem bird flu outbreaks rarely make international headlines these days, but they are a worryingly common event as the deadly virus continues its march...
Typhoid vaccinations are a vital step in Thailand’s efforts to curb outbreaks of the disease that claims more than 200,000 deaths a year in developing countries, a health expert says. Apart from providing sanitary...
In 1736, Benjamin Franklin stressed the importance of fire prevention when he said that “an ounce of prevention is better than cure.” Franklin would have not realized that his advice would go beyond fire...
A surge in celiac disease cases among babies and toddlers in Sweden was not related to childhood vaccinations, a new study finds. Celiac disease is a digestive disorder caused by an abnormal immune response to gluten, a...
The Vaccines for Children program has been providing free vaccines to children in need for nearly two decades. Unfortunately, a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has found that a...
It is difficult to overstate how much the fight against infectious diseases has improved the human condition in the last century. In research released today, for Copenhagen Consensus 2012, economists Dean Jamison...
The immune system protects from infections by detecting and eliminating invading pathogens. These two strategies form the basis of conventional clinical approaches in the fight against infectious diseases.