The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that tests have ruled out plague in several patients in Seychelles under monitoring and treatment for probable or suspected pneumonic infections. The set of samples included one from a 34-year-old man who had returned from Madagascar and who was previously identified by the Seychelles health ministry as a probable imported case, based on a weakly positive result on a rapid test.
HPV-related head and neck cancers are dramatically higher in men than in women.
The study involved almost 5,000 women in a country with high vaccine uptake.
Researchers report a 97.4% efficacy for the 9-strain HPV vaccine.
Though coverage still isn't optimal, for the first time rates topped 60%, with the boys' level gaining ground on the girls'.
A review and meta-analysis of studies on bacterial transmission and antibiotic resistance during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca has found rising rates of resistance among certain gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, researchers report in Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease.
In a gain-of-function (GOF) experiment, Belgian researchers showed that serial passaging of H9N2 avian flu viruses in pigs enhanced the virus's replication and transmissibility, the scientists reported yesterday in PLoS One.
A new letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine attempts to explain why Brazil saw fewer babies born with microcephaly in 2016 as compared to 2015, despite more suspected Zika infections. The authors suggest that 2016's second wave of Zika infections could have actually been another flavivirus, such as chikungunya.
One more H7N9 avian flu infection was reported from China today, a sign of ongoing activity that is within striking distance of the record 319 cases reported during the second wave of activity during the winter of 2013-14.
In its weekly Zika update, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday reported only 34 new cases of the mosquito-borne disease in the United States this week, bringing the total to 4,900.
Of those cases, 4,682 are travel-related and 217 were locally acquired. There are 1,347 pregnant women with confirmed Zika in the United States, and 2,885 such women in US territories.