Tue Nov 30, 7:16 AM ET
BOMBAY, India (Reuters) - India, home to the world's second largest HIV (news - web sites) population after South Africa, is set to begin human trials of a new vaccine against the virus in January, a research institute said Tuesday.
The country has over 5.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS (news - web sites) and experts saying the number could quadruple by 2010.
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - An experimental vaccine reduced the level of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, by at least 80 percent in a Brazilian study of 18 infected patients released in the journal Nature Medicine.
Viral loads in all patients fell and stayed low for one year after being inoculated with the vaccine three times in a six-week period, the study said. In eight of the patients, viral loads fell by more than 90 percent, according to the article posted on the journal's Web site (nature.com).
Therapeutic dendritic-cell vaccine for chronic HIV-1 infection. Nature [Epub ahead of print]
Author: Lu W
From: Nature medicine
Date: 2004
ISSN: 1078-8956
Thursday, November 25, 2004 Posted: 10:06 PM EST (0306 GMT)
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The World Health Organization has issued a dramatic warning that bird flu will trigger an international pandemic that could kill up to seven million people.
The influenza pandemic could occur anywhere from next week to the coming years, WHO said.
"There is no doubt there will be another pandemic," Klaus Stohr of the WHO Global Influenza Program said on the sidelines of a regional bird flu meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.
Sat Nov 27, 2004 10:40 AM ET
By Fayen Wong
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore, facing a rise in AIDS cases, is considering making it compulsory for pregnant women to be screened for HIV/AIDS, an official said on Saturday.
"If all mothers had been tested for HIV, and treatment started for HIV positive mothers, the risk of the baby having AIDS would be reduced from 25 percent to 2 percent," said Balaji Sadasivan, senior minister of state for health, at the fourth Singapore AIDS Conference.
Although Singapore has one of the lowest levels of HIV infection in Asia, the number of new infections hit a record high with 257 cases reported in the first 10 months of this year, more than the 242 new cases reported for all of 2003.
Chicago, November 25: A teenage girl has become the first known rabies victim to survive the disease without the benefit of a rabies vaccination, her doctors said.
Doctors at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin broke the news of the medical first on Wednesday, crediting an experimental treatment that they crafted when the sick teenager showed up at the hospital with an advanced case of the disease.
Jeanna Giese, 15, contracted the deadly virus when she was bitten by an infected bat at a church on September 12 and was admitted to hospital a month later, according to hospital officials.
THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Thursday, Nov 25, 2004,Page 6
The AIDS pandemic rampaging around the globe will not be stopped without radical social change to improve the lot of women and girls, who now look likely to die in greater numbers than men, UN agencies said on Tuesday.
Infections among women are soaring, from sub-Saharan Africa to Asia to Russia. What began as a series of epidemics among men -- in some regions gay and bisexual men, in others men who frequented sex workers or male drug users -- has spread to their female partners who are biologically more easily infected.
New tests show initial screening was false alarm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- No sign of mad cow disease was found in an animal the Agriculture Department had singled out for followup tests, officials said Tuesday. Initial screenings last week had raised the possibility of a new case of the disease in the United States.
A more definitive test at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, came back negative, the officials said. The announcement was a relief to the U.S. beef industry, which is still trying to recover from the nation's first case of the disease last December.
The department said it ran a "gold standard" test twice. Officials did not say where the cow came from or why it was suspected of being diseased.
"Negative results from both ... tests make us confident that the animal in question is indeed negative," the announcement said.
The initial screenings had produced what officials said were "inconclusive" results, but just the possibility of a second case had rattled cattle producers, meatpackers and hamburger chains.
By Karishma Vyas
BANGKOK (Reuters) - The bird flu virus that rampaged across much of Asia this year is the most likely cause of the next human flu pandemic, which could hit up to 30 percent of the world's people, a top international expert said Thursday.
There was no question about whether another influenza pandemic would sweep through the world's more than six billion people, only a question of when, Dr Klaus Stohr told a news conference.
"There are estimates that would put the number of deaths in the range between 2 and 7 million and the number of people affected will go beyond the billions as 25 to 30 per cent will fall ill," he said.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004 Posted: 7:49 PM EST (0049 GMT)
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- 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 U.N. report released on Tuesday.
"Increasingly the face of AIDS is young and female," said Dr. Kathleen Cravero, deputy executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
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.
Published: Wednesday 24 November 2004 - 08:30
In Short:
The number of people living with HIV has reached 39.4 million people worldwide - with high increases reported from EU's neighbouring Russia and Ukraine, according to an annual AIDS report.
Brief News:
The number of people living with HIV has reached its highest level ever, with approximately 39.4 million people infected all over the world, a UNAIDS / World Health Organisation (WHO) report has revealed. The highest increases in HIV infections in the last couple of years have been reported from East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
According to the annual 'AIDS Epidemic Update', an increase in the number of infected individuals at the doorstep of the EU (in countries such as Ukraine and Russia) accounts for most of the 40 per cent increase in the Eastern European and Central Asian regions. The report claims that Russia has the worst epidemic in Europe, with 860,000 people living with HIV at the end of 2003.
Last Updated: 2004-11-18 16:16:30 -0400 (Reuters Health)
By Paul Simao
ATLANTA (Reuters) - An unexpectedly high number of U.S. soldiers injured in the Middle East and Afghanistan are testing positive for a rare, hard-to-treat blood infection in military hospitals, Army doctors reported on Thursday.
A total of 102 soldiers were found to be infected with the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii. The infections occurred among soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and three other sites between Jan. 1, 2002, and Aug. 31, 2004.
Posted on Fri, Nov. 19, 2004
U.S. reports possible new case of mad cow disease
By Johanna Neuman
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - U.S. Department of Agriculture officials announced Thursday that they had discovered a possible new case of mad cow disease but cautioned that the preliminary positive test was "inconclusive."
Final results should be available from the USDA lab in four to seven days, officials said.
After the first U.S. case was discovered last December in a cow in Washington state, the USDA instituted a rapid-screening test on cows considered at risk for the disease older cattle, "downers" too ill to walk, cattle displaying symptoms of neurological ailments as well as on 20,000 healthy cows.
HONG KONG, Nov. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- The staff of the Hong Kong Center for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health hasperformed contact tracing on over 300 healthcare workers, their home contacts, visitors and patients discharged from the pediatrics wards of the Caritas Medical Center (CMC).
Among those contacts who reported fever and respiratory symptoms, two were health care workers who have now recovered, and four were discharged patients from the pediatrics ward.
FOR RELEASE: Nov. 19, 2004
Contact: Susan S. Lang
Office: 607-255-3613
E-Mail: SSL4@cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- What's the best way to get a statistically reliable sample of people who are hard to identify, such as illegal-drug users in large cities, itinerant jazz musicians, aging Manhattan artists and semi-professional storytellers?
Answer: Use a new "pyramid" sampling method developed by a Cornell University sociologist. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will use the method to recruit injection drug users (IDUs) and measure their HIV-risk behavior in the 25 U.S. cities with the largest number of AIDS cases.
Fri Nov 19, 2004 08:26 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - A low-cost antibiotic which has performed well in tests should be given to all HIV children in developing countries to prevent infections such as pneumonia and reduce deaths, scientists said on Friday.
Dr. Diana Gibb of Britain's Medical Research Council said a trial involving HIV-infected children in Zambia was stopped early because it was so successful.
A daily dose of the drug co-trimoxazole nearly halved the death rate in youngsters taking it compared to those given a placebo.
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Consumer and cattle-industry groups joined the government in cautioning against public alarm as federal scientists investigate a possible new case of mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department said Thursday that additional checks were needed after an initial screening proved inconclusive for the disease in a single animal. Results will be known in four days to seven days.
The announcement raised fears that the United States might have its second case of the fatal brain-wasting disease and rattled the cattle industry, meat companies and hamburger restaurant chains.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, attacks an animal's nervous system. People who eat food contaminated with BSE can contract a rare disease that is nearly always fatal _ variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
By Jan Blackburn
Contributing Writer
Since the flu is a dangerous but easily preventable disease, it should receive much more attention from the public health community, Dr. Stephen Morse told an engaged crowd in the Aidekman Center for the Performing Arts last night.
"Influenza is one of the most common and transmissible infections," Morse said. In a normal year for the flu, thousands of people die from a disease "preventable with a vaccine," he said.
Morse is the principal investigator and director of the Columbia University's Center for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP), a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established in October of 2000.
Last Updated: 2004-11-15 16:20:34 -0400 (Reuters Health)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers who found a genetic pattern that predicts who will be helped by a revolutionary new lung cancer drug said on Monday they were looking for patients to help them confirm their findings.
The team at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston needs to find patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer to see if DNA patterns indeed show who will be helped by the drug, called Iressa.
Last Updated: 2004-11-15 8:40:32 -0400 (Reuters Health)
By Lindsay Beck
BEIJING (Reuters) - SARS is expected to emerge in China again this winter, but an epidemic is unlikely as the world's most populous country is better prepared this time round, health officials say.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome emerged in China in 2002, when the communist country was accused of covering up the extent of the virus, contributing to its eventual spread to 8,000 people around the world, 800 of whom died.
"We wouldn't be surprised to see the resurgence of a small number of cases," said Julie Hall, who heads the World Health Organization's SARS team in Beijing.
WHO board supports genetic engineering experiments
Friday, November 12, 2004 Posted: 9:49 AM EST (1449 GMT)
An influential World Health Organization committee is sending shock waves through the scientific community with its recommendation that researchers be permitted to conduct genetic-engineering experiments with the smallpox virus.
The idea is to be able to better combat a disease that is considered a leading bioterror threat though it was publicly eradicated 25 years ago.
Article from CNN Health
Thursday, November 11, 2004 - Page A11
Toronto -- Canada's public-health agency wants to commission the country's major flu vaccine maker to produce trial batches of a vaccine to protect against the lethal avian strain -- known as H5N1 -- that experts fear may provoke the next flu pandemic.
Article from the Globe and Mail.com
By MARC LALLANILLA
Nov. 9, 2004 — Like many young athletes, 12-year-old Nicholas Johnson spent last autumn playing football with his local team, the Stafford Spartans from Stafford, Texas. A minor shoulder injury sent him to the doctor.
"He was like a stroke victim when he came out of the hospital," said Nicholas' mother, Janet. "He was on a ventilator for 12 days. It was the scariest thing I ever went through."
Nicholas was felled by a deadly new bacterium named MRSA that is sweeping the United States and Europe.
And medical experts are alarmed that MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is just one of several deadly new strains of bacteria that are becoming resistant to modern antibiotics.
Article from ABC News Health
BY DELTHIA RICKS
STAFF WRITER
November 8, 2004
When public health officials and vaccine manufacturers convene in Geneva Thursday, they'll keep an eye on the past as they try to anticipate the future.
Their goal: To plan for the eventuality of a worldwide flu pandemic -- a global outbreak on the scale of the deadly Spanish flu of 1918. It is an issue considered urgent because of the persistent presence of bird influenza in Asia.
Article from Newsday.com
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded 14 contracts totaling more than $73 million to fund the Large-Scale Antibody and T Cell Epitope Discovery Program, an initiative aimed at quickly identifying the regions of selected infectious agents that elicit immune reactions. The study of these regions, known as epitopes, promises to uncover targets for new and improved vaccines, therapies and diagnostic tools against potential bioterror agents as well as emerging/re-emerging infectious diseases such as West Nile virus and influenza. NIAID will make information on each newly identified epitope freely available to scientists through a searchable online database currently under development.
"Elucidating the basic mechanisms of immune function is a major focus of our biodefense research agenda," says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of NIAID. "The information generated by this program will deepen our understanding of how components of the immune system defend against certain infectious agents, enabling researchers to design new and improved medical countermeasures."
Article from EurekAlert
Leading experts address need to reduce risk to global blood supply
East Hills, NY (Oct.26, 2004) - - There is increasing evidence that infectious prions that can cause variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human form of "mad cow" disease, can be transmitted through blood transfusion, according to Roger Eglin, Ph.D., Head of National Transfusion Microbiology Laboratories for the English National Blood Service. He spoke at a symposium on Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs) where he was joined by prominent government, public health and blood safety experts from around the globe, including the U.S. and Canada, who raised concerns about a second wave of the disease brought about by human-to-human transmission via blood transfusions.
The panelists convened to discuss the adequacy of safeguards and precautionary measures to prevent human-to-human transmission of this fatal, neurodegenerative prion disease at a symposium held last night at the annual AABB blood banking conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The symposium was sponsored by Pall Corporation (NYSE: PLL), the global leader in filtration technology.
Article from EurekAlert
