Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Should the world be scared of Ebola?

After AIDS, SARS, avian flu and the coronavirus, now Ebola is in the headlines and sparking panic. AFP asks health historian Patrick Zylberman if the world should fear a pandemic.

Immunology

Researchers find that influenza has an Achilles' heel

Flu epidemics cause up to half a million deaths worldwide each year, and emerging strains continually threaten to spread to humans and cause even deadlier pandemics. A study published by Cell Press on April 10 in the journal ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Explainer: What is H7N9 bird flu?

Australia's federal Department of Health has advised general practitioners to be on the lookout for potential cases of the H7N9 strain of influenza A, or bird flu, following a spate of deaths in China.

Medical research

Universal influenza vaccine potentially in sight

The fall ritual of getting an annual influenza shot could join castor oil on the list of bygone remedies within a decade, some scientists say.  And as that tradition fades away, so too will our fears of the virus mutating ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Weather patterns play significant role in seasonal influenza

Influenza is like a cloud, moving across Canada with the fall weather. McMaster researchers have established that the spread of seasonal flu in Canada is tied to low temperature and low humidity, and travels west to east—findings ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

160 quarantined after plague death in Kyrgyzstan (Update)

Four people have been hospitalized and 160 quarantined after a 15-year-old boy who ate marmot meat died of the bubonic plague last week, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Health said Wednesday.

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Joint study sheds new light on the cause of pandemic influenza

With the use of sophisticated mathematical modelling techniques, a mathematician at PolyU and his co-researchers have completed a study that explains the phenomenon of multiple waves of influenza pandemic in the last century.

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