June 21, 2009, 8:44 PM CT

Combined antiviral and targeted chemotherapy

A discovery by a team of Canadian and American scientists could provide new ways to fight HIV-AIDS. As per a newly released study published in Nature Medicine, HIV-AIDS could be treated through a combination of targeted chemotherapy and current Highly Active Retroviral (HAART) therapys. This radical new treatment would make it possible to destroy both the viruses circulating in the body as well as those playing hide-and-seek in immune system cells.

The study was led by Dr. Rafick-Pierre Skaly, of the Universit de Montral. Dr. Jean-Pierre Routy of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Minnesota in the United States also collaborated on the investigation.

To date, anti-AIDS therapys have been stymied by "HIV reservoirs" immune system cells where the virus hides and where existing HAART therapys cannot reach. The scientists successfully identified the cells where HIV hides and the "stealth" mechanisms that allow the virus to escape existing therapys. This breakthrough opens the way towards innovative therapies that are completely different from current approaches.

"Our results argue in favour of a strategy similar to the one used against leukemia, which is targeted chemotherapy, linked to a targeted immune therapy. This would make it possible to destroy the cells containing a virus, while giving the immune system time to regenerate with healthy cells," says Dr. Rafick-Pierre Skaly, a professor at the Universit de Montral, researcher at the Centre Hospitalier de Universit de Montral (CHUM), director of INSERM 743 and scientific director of the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute of Florida......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

June 16, 2009, 9:38 PM CT

Statins don't lower risk of pneumonia

Taking popular cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, such as Lipitor (atorvastatin), does not lower the risk of pneumonia. That's the new finding from a study of more than 3,000 Group Health patients published online on June 16 in advance of the British Medical Journal's June 20 print issue.

"Previous research based on automated claims data had raised some hopeand maybe some hypefor statins as a way to prevent and treat infections including pneumonia," said Sascha Dublin, MD, PhD, a doctor at Group Health and assistant investigator at Group Health Center for Health Studies. "But when we used medical records to get more detailed information about patients, our findings didn't support that approach".

In fact, Dublin's population-based case-control study observed that pneumonia risk was, if anything, slightly higher (26%) in people using a statin than in those not using any; and this extra risk was even higher (61%) for pneumonia severe enough to require being hospitalized.

"As a doctor, I'm a fan of statins for what they've been proven to do: lowering cholesterol and risk of heart disease and stroke in people who've had either disease or are at risk for them," said Dublin. Statins are HMG coenzyme A reductase inhibitors, which also include Zocor (simvastatin) and Mevacor (lovastatin). This class of medications lessens inflammation, which plays a role in infections......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

June 16, 2009, 5:06 AM CT

Predicting Fatal Fungal Infections

As per a research findings published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, scientists from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have identified cells in blood that predict which HIV-positive individuals are most likely to develop deadly fungal meningitis, a major cause of HIV-related death. This form of meningitis affects more than 900,000 HIV-infected people globally-most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and other areas of the world where antiretroviral treatment for HIV is not available.

A major cause of fungal meningitis is Cryptococcus neoformans, a yeast-like fungus usually found in soil and in bird droppings. Virtually everyone has been infected with Cryptococcus neoformans, but a healthy immune system keeps the infection from ever causing disease.

The risk of developing fungal meningitis from Cryptococcus neoformans rises dramatically when people have weakened immunity, due to HIV infection or other reasons including the use of immunosuppressive drugs after organ transplantation, or for treating autoimmune diseases or cancer. Knowing which patients are most likely to develop fungal meningitis would allow costly drugs for preventing fungal disease to be targeted to those most in need. (In the U.S., the widespread use of antiretroviral treatment by HIV-infected people, and their preventive use of anti-fungal drugs, has dramatically reduced their rate of fungal meningitis from Cryptococcus neoformans to about 2%.)......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

June 10, 2009, 9:31 PM CT

HIV-1's 'hijacking mechanism

Scientists at McGill University and the affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital along with colleagues at the University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia may have found a chink in the armour of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), the microorganism which causes AIDS. They have pinpointed the key cellular machinery co-opted by HIV-1 to hijack the human cell for its own benefit. Their study was published in May in the Journal of Biological Chemistry

Once a cell is infected with HIV-1, activation of the virus's gene generates a large HIV-1 RNA molecule known as the RNA genome. This is then transported from the cell nucleus to the inner surface of the plasma membrane. The RNA genome can produce both structural proteins and enzymes, but once it arrives at the plasma membrane it can also assemble into new copies of the virus that actually bud out of the cell. Dr. Andrew J. Mouland and colleagues have discovered how the RNA genome gets transported or trafficked from the nucleus to the plasma membrane.

"There is a highway inside the human cell," explained Dr. Mouland, Associate Professor at McGill's Departments of Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology and head of the HIV-1 RNA Trafficking Laboratory at the Lady Davis Institute. "When you drive your car to Toronto you're 'trafficking' the items in your trunk. Similarly, what we have shown is that HIV-1 commandeers the host cell's endosomal machinery to traffic its structural proteins and RNA genome. Imagine that it's essentially jumping on board for the ride and directing it to where it needs to go. This trafficking can occur very fast in cells; so this is how these key components of HIV-1 so efficiently get to the plasma membrane, where the virus can begin to assemble......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

June 3, 2009, 5:08 AM CT

Efforts to quickly develop swine flu vaccine

Researchers around the world are accelerating their efforts to develop a vaccine against the H1N1 influenza virus (Swine flu) as rapidly as possible, reports Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN). The need for such a vaccine received a strong impetus from the World Health Organization, which has issued a Phase 5 pandemic alert, a strong signal that the WHO believes a pandemic is imminent, as per the June 1 issue of GEN (www.genengnews.com/articles/chitem.aspx?aid=2938).

"It can take five or six months to come up with an entirely novel influenza vaccine," says John Sterling, Editor in Chief of GEN. "There is a great deal of hope that biotech and pharma companies might be able to have something ready sooner".

One company, Replikins, actually predicted over a year ago that significant outbreaks of the H1N1 flu virus would occur within 6-12 months. The predictions were based on correlations of flu virus specimens and PubMed documentation of major outbreaks during the past 90 years, focusing on concentrations of, and spacings between, replikinsthe lysine and histidine residues in the hemagglutinin (HA) unit genetic sequences of the eight major genes in the influenza virus. Replikins' officials say the company's PanFLu vaccine is ready for clinical trials......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

May 27, 2009, 9:08 PM CT

New cellular targets for HIV drug development

Focusing HIV drug development on immune cells called macrophages instead of traditionally targeted T cells could bring us closer to eradicating the disease, as per new research from University of Florida and five other institutions.

In the largest study of its kind, scientists observed that in diseased cells such as cancer cells that are also infected with HIV, almost all the virus was packed into macrophages, whose job is to "eat" invading disease agents.

What's more, up to half of those macrophages were hybrids, formed when pieces of genetic material from several parent HIV viruses combined to form new strains.

Such "recombination" is responsible for formation of mutants that easily elude immune system surveillance and escape from anti-HIV drugs.

"Macrophages are these little factories producing new hybrid particles of the virus, making the virus probably even more aggressive over time," said co-author of study Marco Salemi, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the department of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine at the UF College of Medicine. "If we want to eradicate HIV we need to find a way to actually target the virus specifically infecting the macrophages".

The work was published recently in the journal PLoS ONE........ Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

May 24, 2009, 8:41 PM CT

How superbugs control their lethal weapons

It appears that some superbugs have evolved to develop the ability to manipulate the immune system to everyone's advantage.

A team of scientists at The University of Western Ontario, led by Joaquin (Quim) Madrenas of the Robarts Research Institute, has discovered some processes that reduce the lethal effects of toxins from superbugs, allowing humans and microbes to co-evolve. This discovery may lead to novel alternatives to antibiotics that specifically target the toxic effects of these superbugs. The findings are being reported in the journal Nature Medicine and are available online today.

Madrenas holds a Canada Research Chair in Immunobiology and is a Professor of Microbiology & Immunology, and Medicine at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western. He also is head of Immunology at Robarts Research Institute and Director of the FOCIS Centre for Clinical Immunology and Immunotherapeutics.

Staphylococcus (staph) aureus is the leading cause of infections in hospitals and the second most common cause of infections in the general population. By itself, it is associated with more than half a million hospital admissions a year in North America with estimated costs of more than $6 billion per year. Among the a number of weapons produced by this superbug, the most potent and lethal ones are known as superantigens. These lethal weapons cause massive and harmful activation of the immune system that leads to Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS). TSS is a very serious disease that carries a high mortality, for which we do not have a specific therapy......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

May 20, 2009, 6:33 PM CT

Masks Effective in Influenza Prevention

A new article in the journal Risk Analysis assessed various ways in which aerosol transmission of the flu, a central mode of diffusion which involves breathing droplets in the air, can be reduced. Results show that face protection is a key infection control measure for influenza and can thus affect how people should try to protect themselves from the swine flu.

Lawrence M. Wein, Ph.D., and Michael P. Atkinson of Stanford University constructed a mathematical model of aerosol transmission of the flu to explore infection control measures in the home.

Their model predicted that the use of face protection including N95 respirators (these fit tight around the face and are often worn by construction workers) and surgical masks (these fit looser around the face and are often worn by dental hygienists) are effective in preventing the flu. The filters in surgical masks keep out 98 percent of the virus. Also, only 30 percent of the benefits of the respirators and masks are achieved if they are used only after an infected person develops symptoms.

"Our research aids in the understanding of the efficacy of infection control measures for influenza, and provides a framework about the routes of transmission," the authors conclude.

This timely article has the potential to impact current efforts and recommendations to control the so-called swine flu by international, national and local governments in perspective......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

May 20, 2009, 6:28 PM CT

How influenza virus to evade the body's immune response

Scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) have identified a critical molecular mechanism that allows the influenza virus to evade the body's immune response system.

The study would be reported in the May 21 issue of the journal Cell Host & Microbe

"We have found a mechanism that the influenza virus uses to inhibit the body's immune response that emphasizes the vital role of a certain protein in defending against viruses,"," says Jae Jung, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and the principal investigator of the study. "Along with our prior studies (Nature 2007 and PNAS 2008), this finding could provide scientists with the information needed to create a new drug to enhance immunity and block influenza virus infection and replication".

Several specific intracellular receptors are responsible for detecting the virus and activating the body's defensive mechanisms. When a virus' RNA enters the intracellular fluid, a receptor known as retinoic-acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I) detects it and triggers a response that limits virus replication and calls the body's defenses into action. RIG-I acts as the sensor and security force against attacks, Jung explains. Then, a protein known as TRIM25 helps RIG-I transmit an alarm signal, which ultimately floods the cell and surrounding tissue with antiviral interferons......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

May 20, 2009, 5:14 AM CT

Clues to HIV

Rice University's Andrew Barron and his group, working with labs in Italy, Gera number of and Greece, have identified specific molecules that could block the means by which the deadly virus spreads by taking away its ability to bind with other proteins.

Using computer simulations, scientists tested more than 100 carbon fullerene, or C-60, derivatives initially developed at Rice for other purposes to see if they could be used to inhibit a strain of the virus, HIV-1 PR, by attaching themselves to its binding pocket.

"There are a lot of people doing this kind of research, but it tends to be one group or one pharmaceutical company taking a shotgun approach -- make a molecule and try it out, then make another molecule and try it out," said Barron, Rice's Charles W. Duncan Jr.-Welch Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science. "This is interesting because we're tackling an important problem in a very rational way".

The groups reported their findings in a paper published on the American Chemical Society's Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling Web site last week.

Their method of modeling ways to attack HIV may not be unique, but their collaboration is. Research groups from five institutions -- two in Greece, one in Gera number of, one in Italy and Barron's group at Rice -- came together through e-mail contacts and conversations over a number of months, each working on facets of the problem. "Not all the groups have ever met in person," Barron said. Most remarkable, he said, is that their research to date has been completely unfunded......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

May 20, 2009, 5:09 AM CT

A new way of treating the flu

What happens if the next big influenza mutation proves resistant to the available anti-viral drugs? This question is presenting itself right now to researchers and health officials this week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, as they continue to do battle with H1N1, the so-called swine flu, and prepare for the next iteration of the ever-changing flu virus.

Promising new research announced by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could provide an entirely new tool to combat the flu. The discovery is a one-two punch against the illness that targets the illness on two fronts, going one critical step further than any currently available flu drug.

"We have been fortunate with H1N1 because it has been responding well to available drugs. But if the virus mutates substantially, the currently available drugs might be ineffective because they only target one portion of the virus," said Robert Linhardt, the Ann and John H. Broadbent Jr. '59 Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer. "By targeting both portions of the virus, the H and the N, we can interfere with both the initial attachment to the cell that is being infected and the release of the budding virus from the cell that has been affected".

The findings of the team, which have broad implications for future flu drugs, will be featured on the cover of the June edition of European Journal of Organic Chemistry........ Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

May 13, 2009, 5:06 AM CT

Better vaccines

A team of Princeton University researchers may have found a better way to make a vaccine against the flu virus.

Though theoretical, the work points to the critical importance of what has been a poorly appreciated aspect of the interaction between a virus and those naturally produced defensive proteins called antibodies that fight infection. By manipulating this multi-stage interactive process -- known as antibody interference -- to advantage, the researchers believe it appears to be possible to design more powerful vaccines than exist today.

The findings are described in the May 11 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We have proposed that antibody interference plays a major role in determining the effectiveness of the antibody response to a viral infection," said Ned Wingreen, a professor of molecular biology and a member of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. "And we think that in order to get a more powerful vaccine, people are going to want one that minimizes this interference".

Other authors on the paper include Simon Levin, the George M. Moffett Professor of Biology, and Wilfred Ndifon, a graduate student in Levin's lab and first author on the paper.

When a virus like influenza attacks a human, the body mounts a defense, producing antibodies custom-designed to attach themselves to the virus, blocking it from action and effectively neutralizing its harmful effects on the body......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

May 5, 2009, 8:36 PM CT

Flu pandemic in prison

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC (May 5, 2009) When pandemics occur, correctional facilities are not immune. With more than 9 million people incarcerated across the globe 2.25 million in U.S. jails and prisons alone it is vital that correctional officials and health professionals be prepared for a worst-case scenario that involves pandemic influenza reaching inmates and staff.

With collaborative planning and training, prison and public health officials can help control influenza outbreaks behind bars, as per an article in the recent issue of the Journal of Correctional Health Care (published by SAGE).

A two-day conference on prison pandemic preparedness held in Georgia in 2007 could serve as a model for such training. Administrators, medical doctors, registered nurses, doctor assistants, and pharmacists were among the participants, as well as state and local public health officials.

The objectives were to educate participants about pandemic flu issues in prison settings, provide impetus for initial planning in Georgia's prisons, and elicit ideas about how the prisons could best prepare for and respond to pandemic flu. Topics included nonpharmaceutical interventions, health care surge capacity, and prison-community interfaces......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

April 30, 2009, 9:33 PM CT

Promise against resistant staph infections

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have combined their revolutionary new drug-delivery system with a powerful antimicrobial agent to treat potentially deadly drug-resistant staph infections in mice. The study is published this month in the online version of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology

Staphylococcus aureus bacteria cause the majority of superficial and invasive skin infections, resulting in more than 11 million outpatient/emergency room visits and 464,000 hospital admissions annually in the U.S. Staph are also notorious for infecting patients while they're in the hospital for other reasons. Staph infections can be deadly if the bacteria invade the bloodstream, heart, lungs, or urinary tract. As more strains of staph become resistant to common antibiotics, the need for new therapys has become urgent.

The drug-delivery system, developed by Einstein scientists, consists of biocompatible nanoparticles each smaller than a grain of pollen that can carry tiny payloads of various drugs or other medically useful substances and release them in a controlled and sustained manner. In this study, the nanoparticles were designed to transport and slowly release nitric oxide (NO) gas.

The nanoparticle technology was developed by Joel M. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., professor of physiology & biophysics and of medicine at Einstein, and his son, Adam Friedman, M.D., an incoming chief resident in the division of dermatology at Einstein. The Friedmans were co-senior authors of the study along with Joshua D. Nosanchuck, M.D., associate professor in the departments of medicine and microbiology & immunology at Einstein......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

April 28, 2009, 5:13 AM CT

A pandemic flu in making?

New research published recently (Monday April 27) from the University of Leicester and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust warns of a six-month time lag before effective vaccines can be manufactured in the event of a pandemic flu outbreak.

By that time, the first wave of pandemic flu appears to be over before people are vaccinated, says Dr Iain Stephenson, Consultant in Infectious Diseases at the Leicester Royal Infirmary and a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Leicester.

In his paper published in PNAS- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA- Dr Stephenson makes the first case for a pre-pandemic vaccine to mitigate the worst effects of pandemic flu.

He said: "This study is the first to show an effective pre-pandemic vaccine approach. This means that we could vaccinate people potentially a number of years before a pandemic, to generate memory cells that are long lasting and can be rapidly boosted by a single dose of vaccine when needed".

Dr Stephenson, of the Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation at the University of Leicester, said: "If an influenza pandemic occurs, vaccination will to be the main way to protect the population. The major current threat seems to be from avian influenza H5N1 (bird flu) which has spread rapidly around the world and causes human infections and deaths......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

April 24, 2009, 4:57 AM CT

New guidance on malaria elimination

Countries and policy leaders gain new guidance today on how and when to eliminate malaria, paving the way for the potential global eradication of the deadly disease. The announcement is being made on behalf of the Malaria Elimination Group, a global body of researchers, policy experts and country program managers, by the Global Health Group of UCSF Global Health Sciences.

"The international community has provided relatively little guidance to countries on elimination to date. The documents published recently are intended to change that," said Sir Richard Feachem, KBE, DSc(Med), PhD, director of the Global Health Group, and chair of the Malaria Elimination Group.

"Much of the world's attention has rightly focused on controlling malaria and reducing deaths caused by the disease," Feachem said. "However, 39 countries around the world have embarked on the next step of elimination in the pursuit of eventual global eradication. They deserve our full support and encouragement".

Feachem will officially announce the release of two publications, Shrinking the Malaria Map: A Prospectus on Malaria Elimination, and its companion, Shrinking the Malaria Map: A Guide on Malaria Elimination for Policy Makers, during a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, jointly sponsored with the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership to commemorate World Malaria Day 2009......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

April 23, 2009, 5:03 AM CT

DNA-based vaccination against chronic hepatitis C

Copenhagen, Denmark, Thursday 23 April: The first-proof-of-concept for a DNA-based therapeutic vaccination against chronic hepatitis C was announced recently at EASL 2009, the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In the first clinical trial of a therapeutic vaccination using naked DNA delivered by in vivo electroporation (EP), antiviral effects were shown in patients with hepatitis C (HCV). Scientists hope that this will encourage further clinical development. The data also provide further evidence for the antiviral role of the HCV-specific T cell response.

It is estimated that some 3% of the world's population is infected with HCV. In industrialised countries, hepatitis C accounts for 70% of chronic hepatitis cases. One of the main concerns is that HCV infection remains asymptomatic until advanced stages of the disease.

Clearance of HCV infection correlates with activation of the host T cell response. Therefore, in this study, scientists developed a T cell vaccine based on a codon-optimised HCV non-structural (NS) 3/4A DNA-gene expressed under the control of the cytomegalovirus immediate-early promoter (ChronVac-C) delivered by in vivo electroporation (EP). A first phase I/IIa clinical trial in HCV infected patients is currently ongoing......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

March 31, 2009, 4:06 PM CT

New treatment for HIV infection

A potential therapy for HIV may one day help people who are not responding to Anti-Retroviral Therapy, suggests new research published tomorrow in The Journal of Immunology Researchers looking at monkeys with the simian form of HIV were able to reduce the virus levels in the blood to undetectable levels, by treating the monkeys with a molecule called D-1mT alongside Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART).

Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) is very similar to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and it is used to study the condition in animal models. In both HIV and SIV, the level of virus in the blood, or 'viral load', is important because when the viral load is high, the disease progresses and it depletes the patient's immune system. This eventually leads to the onset of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), where the patient cannot fight infections which would be innocuous in healthy individuals.

Currently, the 'gold standard' therapy for HIV is Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART), a cocktail of drugs that reduces the viral load by stopping the virus from replicating. HAART can increase the life expectancy of an HIV-positive patient substantially if it works well. However, the therapy is not effective for around one in ten patients, partly because some develop resistance to the drugs used in HAART. The researchers, from Imperial College London, the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, and Innsbruck Medical University, hope their study could ultimately lead to a new therapy that will help HAART to work more effectively in these people......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

March 18, 2009, 5:17 AM CT

Flu Infection and Pneumonia

A joint venture from scientists from the Helmholtz-Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, the Otto-von-Guericke-University in Magdeburg, and the Karolinska institute in Sweden have taken an in-depth look at the correlation between flu infection and pneumonia. Their results, recently released in the scientific journal "PLoS One", have disproven a common theory about flu-like pneumonia.

Some viral infections trigger a decrease of immune cells in the blood a so-called "lymphopenia". The reasons behind it and whether this is the case with influenza are unknown. To investigate the latter, HZI scientists infected mice with flu viruses and measured the amount of immune cells in the animal's blood every day. Some days later, flu-infected mice received a dosage of pneumonia bacteria commonly harmless for healthy mice. While the flu-infected mice did develop a superinfection & subsequently died, surprisingly, they were not suffering from lymphopenia. The healthy, non-flu-infected mice defeated the bacteria successfully and recovered.

To discover whether a lack of immune cells encourages an infection with pneumonia bacteria in general, an artificial drug-induced lymphopenia was established in the mice. Without infecting these lymphopenic mice with flu viruses, they received pneumonia bacteria. Despite a severe lack of immune cells, the mice recovered completely......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

March 18, 2009, 5:08 AM CT

Engineering flu vaccines

A new computerized method of testing could help world health officials better identify flu vaccines that are effective against multiple strains of the disease. Rice University researchers who created the method say tests of data from bird flu and seasonal flu outbreaks suggest their method can better gauge the efficacy of proposed vaccines than can tests used today.

Rice's Michael Deem, the lead scientist on the project, will present the group's results March 19 at the American Physical Society's 2009 meeting in Pittsburgh. The results are also slated to appear in the forthcoming book "Influenza: Molecular Virology" from Horizon Scientific Press.

Avian flu, or bird flu, is a especially deadly type of flu that's transmitted from birds to humans. It hasn't yet evolved into a form that can be transmitted readily between humans, but researchers and world health authorities are trying to prepare for a potential outbreak. Because the virus mutates continually, creating a vaccine in advance is problematic. For example, researchers have already observed that a vaccine designed for the 1997 strain of bird flu does not work against a 2003 strain.

"Current vaccines contain only a single version of a given flu subtype," Deem said. "We wanted to gauge the effectiveness of a vaccine that contained multiple versions of a given subtype"......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

March 18, 2009, 4:59 AM CT

How clean are your hands?

Epidemiologists and computer researchers at the University of Iowa have collaborated to create a new low-cost, green technology for automatically tracking the use of hand hygiene dispensers before healthcare workers enter and after they exit patient rooms. This novel method of monitoring hand hygiene compliance, which is essential for infection control in hospitals, was released recently at the annual meeting of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA).

"We know that a range of pathogens are spread from healthcare workers to patients by direct touch and that the current rates of hand hygiene compliance are suboptimal," said Philip Polgreen, MD, University of Iowa Health Care. "Our new low-cost method of monitoring could potentially reduce cost while increasing compliance rates." The failure of healthcare workers to perform appropriate hand hygiene is one of the leading preventable causes of healthcare-associated infections.

This new technology marks a major shift from the current method of monitoring hand hygiene compliance that involves direct human observation, which is both costly and labor intensive. With human observation there is also the potential for a "Hawthorne Effect," which means workers will only clean their hands when being actively observed. Older automated monitoring technology, called radio-frequency identification (RFID) infrastructure, is available, but can be prohibitively costly and consumes far more power than Polgreen's method......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

March 16, 2009, 8:22 PM CT

Waking up dormant HIV

HAART (highly active anti-retroviral treatment) has emerged as an extremely effective HIV therapy that keeps virus levels almost undetectable; however, HAART can never truly eradicate the virus as some HIV always remains dormant in cells. But, a chemical called suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), recently approved as a leukemia drug, has now been shown to 'turn on' latent HIV, making it an attractive candidate to weed out the hidden virus that HAART misses.

Matija Peterlin at UCSF and his colleagues had previously identified another chemical called HMBA that could activate latent HIV, but the risk of several toxic side effects made HMBA clinically non-viable. However, the chemically similar SAHA had received FDA approval, making it a potentially safer alternate.

So, the scientists examined whether SAHA had any effect on HIV latency. They observed that SAHA could indeed stimulate latent HIV to begin replicating, which exposes the infected cell to HAART drugs. SAHA could activate HIV in both laboratory cells as well as from blood samples taken from HIV patients on antiretroviral treatment. Importantly, this successful activation was achieved using clinical doses of SAHA, suggesting toxicity will not be a problem......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

March 16, 2009, 7:57 PM CT

Catching the common cold virus

A newly released study by Brigham Young University scientists on the virus behind nearly half of all cold infections explains how and where evolution occurs in the rhinovirus genome and what this means for possible vaccines.

The study is published in the recent issue of the academic journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

"There are a lot of different approaches to treating the cold, none of which seem to be effective," said Keith Crandall, professor of biology and co-author of the study. "This is partly because we haven't spent a lot of time studying the virus and its history to see how it's responding to the human immune system and drugs".

The BYU team studied genomic sequences available online and used computer algorithms to estimate how the rhinovirus is correlation to other viruses.

As per Nicole Lewis-Rogers, a postdoctoral fellow in the Biology Department and main author on the study, the rhinovirus is similar to the polio virus, whose vaccine was announced in 1955. But while the polio virus has just three subspecies, the rhinovirus has more than 100 subspecies, which continually evolve.

"These viruses could be under the same constraints and yet change differently," Lewis-Rogers said. "That's why it is so hard to create a vaccine"......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

March 16, 2009, 5:17 AM CT

A natural approach for HIV vaccine

For 25 years, scientists have tried and failed to develop an HIV vaccine, primarily by focusing on a small number of engineered "super antibodies" to fend off the virus before it takes hold. So far, these magic bullet antibodies have proved impossible to produce in people. Now, in research to be published March 15 online by Nature, researchers at The Rockefeller University have laid out a new approach. They have identified a diverse team of antibodies in "slow-progressing" HIV patients whose coordinated pack hunting knocks down the virus just as well as their super-antibody cousins fighting solo.

By showcasing the dynamic, natural immune response in these exceptional patients, the research, led by Michel C. Nussenzweig, Sherman Fairchild Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, suggests that an effective HIV vaccine may come from a shotgun approach using of a wide range of natural antibodies rather than an engineered magic bullet.

"We wanted to try something different, so we tried to reproduce what's in the patient. And what's in the patient is a number of different antibodies that individually have limited neutralizing abilities but together are quite powerful," says Nussenzweig, who also is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "This should make people think about what an effective vaccine should look like."........ Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

March 3, 2009, 6:10 AM CT

Treating high cholesterol in HIV patients

A newly released study in the online issue of Annals of Internal Medicine has observed that cholesterol medications can work well among certain HIV patients at risk for cardiovascular disease.

Though HIV patients are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease in part due to lipid abnormalities that can occur with the use of certain antiretroviral therapies, scientists now have evidence that cholesterol medications work very well in this population.

"This should be encouraging for patients and their providers," said the study's main author Michael Silverberg, PhD, MPH, a research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland. CA. He explained that HIV Patients getting cholesterol-lowering therapys such as statins get slightly less benefit on cholesterol levels from the therapy as patients without HIV infection, but it is still a clinically significant benefit and side effects from the drugs occurred in very few patients.

In addition, say the researchers, the use of fibrates in combination with NNRTIs (a class of antiretroviral drugs) appears to be a good choice to manage triglyceride levels in HIV patients. Triglycerides are another fat in that blood that contributes to inflammation of the pancreas and may contribute to coronary disease, they explain......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

March 3, 2009, 6:07 AM CT

Increasing prevalence of drug resistant Influenza

Influenza A viruses (H1N1 subtype) that are resistant to the drug oseltamivir circulated widely in the U.S. during the 2007-2008 influenza season, with an even higher prevalence of drug resistance during the current 2008-2009 influenza season, as per a research studyto be reported in the March 11 issue of JAMA, and being released early online because of its public health importance.

During the 2007-2008 influenza season, increased levels of resistance to the influenza drug oseltamivir (marketed as Tamiflu) were detected for the first time in the United States and worldwide. In addition, early 2008-2009 influenza season surveillance data suggest that oseltamivir resistance among influenza A(H1N1) viruses will most likely be higher, as per background information in the article. It was unknown whether some resistant viruses would cause clinical illness similar to other influenza viruses.

Nila J. Dharan, M.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and his colleagues examined the trends and characteristics of patients infected with oseltamivir-resistant and -susceptible influenza A(H1N1) virus. These viruses, identified and submitted to the CDC by U.S. public health laboratories between September 2007 and May 2008 and between September 28, 2008, and February 19, 2009, were tested as part of ongoing surveillance......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source