infectious diseases
A team of Scripps Research scientists has created a new analog to DNA that assembles and disassembles itself without the need for enzymes. Because the new system comprises components that might reasonably be expected in a primordial world, the new chemical system could answer questions about how life could emerge.
Some disease-causing bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics because they have peculiar sex lives, say researchers publishing new results today in the journal Science. The new study helps scientists understand how bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, which is a major challenge for those treating infectious diseases, say the authors from Imperial College London.
LA JOLLA, CA -- June 8, 2009 ?A team of researchers at The Scripps Research Institute and other institutions has discovered a new way by which DNA repairs itself, a process that is critical to the protection of the genome, and integral to prevention of cancer development.
Could a global program of universal, voluntary, annual HIV testing and immediate treatment for those who test positive effectively extinguish the HIV pandemic? Is such a program feasible?
LA JOLLA, CA, June 8, 2009 ?As survival rates among some patients with cancer continue to rise, so does the spread of these cancers to the brain -- as much as 40 percent of all diagnosed brain cancers are considered metastatic, having spread from a primary cancer elsewhere in the body.
Despite increasingly frequent references to global health from media, scholars and students, the term is rarely defined. And when it is defined, it is often merely a rephrased definition of public health or an updated definition of international health. What, then, is global health?
Scientists here have determined that combining bed bugs' own chemical signals with a common insect control agent makes that treatment more effective at killing the bugs.
The researchers found that stirring up the bed bugs by spraying their environment with synthetic versions of their alarm pheromones makes them more likely to walk through agents called desiccant dusts, which kill the bugs by mak
Your immune system plays an important function in your health -- it protects you against viruses, bacteria, and other toxins that can cause disease. In autoinflammatory diseases, however, the immune system goes awry, causing unprovoked and dangerous inflammation.
Call it a Breathalyzer for the hands.
Using sensors capable of detecting drugs in breath, new technology developed at University of Florida monitors health-care workers' hand hygiene by detecting sanitizer or soap fumes given off from their hands.
In the rat race of life, one thing is certain: there's no place like home.
Now, a study published this week in the journal Molecular Ecology finds the same is as true for rats as for humans.
Although inner city rodents appear to roam freely, most form distinct neighborhoods where they spend the majority of their lives.
SAN DIEGO ? (May 25, 2009) Researchers from the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology have pinpointed the cellular defect that increases the likelihood, among eczema sufferers, of developing eczema vaccinatum, a severe and potentially fatal reaction to the smallpox vaccine.
With the current outbreak of swine flu, and in the absence of a vaccine or treatment at present, the only way to contain the virus is to get people around the world to take precautionary measures.
PROVIDENCE, RI ? It is time for states to suspend, rather than terminate, the Medicaid benefits of inmates while they are incarcerated, say correctional health care experts from The Miriam Hospital in a commentary published online by the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Researchers have successfully tested first the first time a computer simulation of major portions of the body's immune reaction to influenza type A, with implications for treatment design and preparation ahead of future pandemics, according to work accepted for publication, and posted online, by the Journal of Virology.
STANFORD, Calif. - HIV-positive patients who don't seek medical attention until they have a serious AIDS-related condition can reduce their risk of death or other complications by half if they get antiretroviral treatment early on, according to a new multicenter trial led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.