England has experienced an unprecedented resurgence in scarlet fever infections that began in 2014, but so far the reasons for the escalation aren't clear, researchers from Public Health England reported yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
An analysis of 40 human H7N9 avian flu clusters from five waves of disease activity in China found a stable pattern in number and size, suggesting that the human-to-human transmission risk hasn't changed since the virus emerged in 2013. A team from China and their collaborators at the US Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention reported its findings yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
The new parasite is closely related to Plasmodium falciparum, which causes malaria in humans.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today launched an interactive research tool called Resistome Tracker to track antibiotic-resistance genes.
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) reported a new case of MERS-CoV in Riyadh today.
A 58-year-old Saudi man was diagnosed as having MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) after presenting with symptoms. He is in critical condition and is not a healthcare worker. The source of the man's infection is listed as "primary," meaning it is unlikely he contracted the virus from another person.
Scientists manipulate mosquitoes' abilities to host the parasite Plasmodium falciparum.
Seven people who had close contact with swine at the Charles County Fair in Maryland have been diagnosed as having H3N2v, a variant swine-origin flu. The Maryland Department of Health (MDH) published details of the cases on its Web site yesterday.
A multidrug-resistant parasite lineage that has become dominant in Cambodia, with spread to parts of Thailand and Laos, has now spread to southern Vietnam, where it has been linked to an alarming number of treatment failures in patients who were given the nation's first-line treatment.
Pregnant women who received the pandemic H1N1 influenza vaccine in 2009 or 2010 were no more likely to have adverse birth outcomes than women who received the seasonal flu shot at the time, according to a study published yesterday in Vaccine.
An experimental malaria drug called AQ-13 compared well with an established combination treatment in a non-inferiority trial in Malian men with non-severe malaria, according to a report yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.