http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. A new approach for immunizing against influenza elicited a more potent immune response and broader protection than the currently licensed seasonal influenza vaccines when tested in mice and ferrets. The vaccine concept, which was developed by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), represents an important step forward in the quest to develop a universal influenza vaccine—one that would protect against most or all influenza strains without the need for an annual vaccination. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-approach-influenza-vaccination-early-animal.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 22 May 2013 15:38:42 EST news288455916 A new computer model could help scientists predict when a particular strain of avian influenza might become infectious from bird to human, according to a report to be published in the International Journal Data Mining and Bioinformatics. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-viruses-infectious.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 20 May 2013 11:09:36 EST news288266968 A team of NIH scientists has developed a new tool to identify broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) capable of preventing infection by the majority of HIV strains found around the globe, an advance that could help speed HIV vaccine research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-scientists-tool-powerful-hiv-antibodies.html HIV & AIDS Thu, 09 May 2013 14:00:15 EST news287314999 Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis is researching a vaccine for the H7N9 strain of bird flu, its chief executive said Thursday, amid fears that the disease could mutate into a form that spreads among people. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-pharma-giant-novartis-h7n9-vaccine.html Medications Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:10:01 EST news286106343 A new strain of bird flu that emerged in China over the past month is one of the "most lethal" flu viruses so far, worrying health officials because it can jump more easily from birds to humans than the one that started killing people a decade ago, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-h7n9-flu-easily-bird-human.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:29:02 EST news285996531 (Medical Xpress)—This year's unusually long and rocky flu season would be nothing compared to the pandemic that could occur if bird flu became highly contagious among humans, which is why UCLA researchers and their colleagues are creating new ways to predict where an outbreak could emerge. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-hotspots-future-flu-outbreaks.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:40:37 EST news282469229 A new class of influenza drug has been shown effective against drug-resistant strains of the flu virus, according to a study led by University of British Columbia researchers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-flu-drug-virus-tracks.html Medical research Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:00:11 EST news280676007 International scientists who last year halted controversial research with the deadly bird flu say they are resuming their work as countries adopt new rules to ensure safety. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-scientists-resume-lab-bred-bird-flu.html Medical research Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:09:54 EST news278176188 (HealthDay)—The cervical cancer vaccine has turned into one of the biggest success stories in the field. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-cervical-cancer-vaccines.html Cancer Sat, 19 Jan 2013 06:51:57 EST news277800711 (HealthDay)—Flucelvax is the first seasonal flu vaccine to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration using a manufacturing method called cell culture technology, the agency said. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-just-approved-flu-vaccine-production-method.html Medications Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:30:01 EST news272728503 Children living in low-income urban areas appear especially prone to developing asthma, possibly related to infections they acquire early in life. In a new study in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, available online, researchers from the University of Wisconsin in Madison investigated viral respiratory illnesses and their possible role in the development of asthma in urban versus suburban babies. The differences in viral illness patterns they found provide insights that could help guide the development of new asthma treatments in children. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-city-infants-patterns-viral-respiratory.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:00:01 EST news267807835 A new study has found that even though HIV diversifies widely within infected individuals over time, the virus strains that ultimately are passed on through heterosexual transmission often resemble the strain of virus that originally infected the transmitting partner. Learning the characteristics of these preferentially transmitted HIV strains may help advance HIV prevention efforts, particularly with regard to an HIV vaccine, according to the scientists who conducted the study. The research was led by Andrew D. Redd, Ph.D., staff scientist, and Thomas C. Quinn, M.D., senior investigator, both in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-heterosexuals-transmitted-hiv-strains-resemble.html HIV & AIDS Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:27:49 EST news267359257 (HealthDay)—A new report shows that a deadly swine flu virus can infect ferrets, highlighting the importance of continuous surveillance of emerging flu strains. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-powerful-swine-flu-strain-korea.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 10 Sep 2012 18:00:01 EST news266517454 A new highly-toxic strain of the potentially deadly bird flu virus has appeared in Vietnam and is spreading fast, according to state media reports. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-vietnam-highly-toxic-bird-flu.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Fri, 07 Sep 2012 07:50:07 EST news266223000 Research at Imperial College London examining influenza transmission in ferrets suggests that the virus can be passed on before the appearance of symptoms. If the finding applies to humans, it means that people pass on flu to others before they know they're infected, making it very difficult to contain epidemics. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-flu-transmitted-symptoms.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 29 Aug 2012 17:00:12 EST news265478038 National Institutes of Health scientists have identified how a kind of immature immune cell responds to a part of influenza virus and have traced the path those cells take to generate antibodies that can neutralize a wide range of influenza virus strains. Study researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, were led by Gary Nabel, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIAID's Vaccine Research Center. Their findings appear online in advance of print in Nature. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-broadly-neutralizing-antibodies-aid-universal.html Medical research Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:00:04 EST news265463638 (HealthDay) -- The formulation for the vaccine that will help protect against the flu this coming season was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-fda-flu-vaccine-season.html Medications Tue, 14 Aug 2012 10:32:15 EST news264159127 A team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and Crucell Vaccine Institute in the Netherlands describes three human antibodies that provide broad protection against Influenza B virus strains. The same team had previously reported finding broadly neutralizing antibodies against Influenza A strains. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-universal-vaccine-scientists-antibodies-large.html Medical research Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:00:01 EST news263736323 Trials in Thailand with a candidate vaccine for dengue, a potentially fatal mosquito-borne disease, have shown it to protect against three of the four virus strains, its French maker said Wednesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-candidate-dengue-vaccine.html Medications Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:00:02 EST news262425015 Dozens of pet birds smuggled from southern China into Taiwan tested positive for the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus and were destroyed, Taiwanese authorities said Tuesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-taiwan-h5n1-virus-birds-smuggled.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 17 Jul 2012 06:41:23 EST news261726078 The pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccine can generate antibodies in vaccinated individuals not only against the H1N1 virus, but also against other influenza virus strains including H5N1 and H3N2. This discovery adds an important new dimension to the finding last year that people infected with pandemic 2009 H1N1 virus produced high levels of antibodies that were broadly cross-reactive against a variety of flu strains. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-pandemic-h1n1-vaccination-antibodies-multiple.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 21 May 2012 15:00:46 EST news256815108 Whether you become infected by some strains of rotavirus may depend on your blood type. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-blood-predispose-rotavirus-infections.html Medical research Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:00:11 EST news253620573 Taiwan's authorities said Saturday they had culled nearly 58,000 chickens following the latest outbreak of the less virulent strain of bird flu. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-taiwan-chicken-cull-bird-flu.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:59:50 EST news250001985 Scientists from the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) have discovered that an antigen common to most influenza viruses, and commonly referred to as matrix protein 2 (M2), when administered under the tongue could protect mice against experimental infection caused by various influenza viruses, including the highly pathogenic avian H5 virus and the pandemic H1 ("swine flu") virus. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-results-mice-needle-free-candidate-universal.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:22:16 EST news242562123 HIV is coated in sugars that usually hide the virus from the immune system. Newly published research reveals how one broadly neutralizing HIV antibody actually uses part of the sugary cloak to help bind to the virus. The antibody binding site, called the V1/V2 region, represents a suitable HIV vaccine target, according to the scientists who conducted the study. In addition, their research reveals the detailed structure of the V1/V2 region, the last part of the virus surface to be visualized at the atomic level. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-antibody-key-sugars-hiv-surface.html HIV & AIDS Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:00:06 EST news241274510 The immune response to an H5N1 avian influenza vaccine was greatly enhanced in healthy adults if they were first primed with a DNA vaccine expressing a gene for a key H5N1 protein, researchers say. Their report describes results from two clinical studies conducted by researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-priming-dna-vaccine-avian-flu.html Medical research Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:12:11 EST news236887907 The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on Monday warned about a new mutant strain of the deadly bird flu H5N1 virus in China and Vietnam, saying there could be a "major resurgence" of the disease. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-agency-mutant-bird-flu-china.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 29 Aug 2011 09:58:27 EST news233830698 The spread of Dengue fever in northern Australia may be controlled by a bacterium that infects mosquitoes that harbor the virus, Australian and U.S. researchers report Aug. 25 in two papers published in the journal Nature. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-dengue-fever.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:26:27 EST news233411067 The last century has seen two major pandemics caused by the H1N1 virus -- the Spanish Flu in 1918 and 2009's Swine Flu scare, which had thousands travelling with surgical masks and clamoring for vaccination. But scientists did not know what distinguished the Swine Flu from ordinary influenza in pigs or seasonal outbreaks in humans, giving it the power to travel extensively and infect large populations. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-h1n1-pandemic.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:35:50 EST news232623332 What causes a virus to suddenly begin infecting large numbers of people? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-anatomy-outbreak-probing-genetics-chikungunya.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 05 May 2011 16:38:31 EST news223832278