Contents
- The latest flu reports
- Audio and video
- Conference preview: AIDS 2012
- Canadian news
- International news
- HPV-related news
- ‘Science Speaks’ interview series on HIV and TB
FLU REPORTS
AUDIO / VIDEO
TWiM Episode 2, March 9 2011 (audio)
The plague, microbial virulence, and the gut microbiome: Vincent, Cliff, and Michael review a fatal laboratory acquired Yersinia pestis infection, and how gut bacteria control body weight and metabolic activity.
The Guardian 14 March 2011(video - 11 min)
As discrimination against homosexuals in Africa reaches a new murderous peak, Guardian Films travels to Mombasa, Kenya, to hear from a male prostitute who risks his life to support his younger sister.
CONFERENCE PREVIEW
CANADA
USA TODAY March 18, 2011
The female condom, once the contraceptive that got little respect, seems to be making a comeback in U.S. cities, thanks to a new and improved design.
CMAJ March 16, 2011
The government of Nunavut is “covering up” information indicating that a wave of flu-like illness that is sweeping Nunavut’s communities in recent weeks is actually an epidemic of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a Canadian infectious diseases expert charges.
The world remains woefully unprepared to handle a flu pandemic, as evidenced by shortcomings witnessed during pandemic (H1N1) 2009, according to a expert panel struck to review the World Health Organization’s handling of the swine flu outbreak.
National Post Mar 14, 2011
New Canadian research on a common immune booster is being touted as a breakthrough for the development of vaccines intended to fight serious diseases, such as HIV and malaria.
CTV / CP Mar 11, 2011
A flu-like illness that has swept through half of Nunavut's communities and which is suspected in at least two infant deaths is renewing a debate on whether the territory should distribute a drug to all its newborns.
CMAJ Mar 11, 2011
Basically, it involves the collection of online data from thousands of sources, including stories from news aggregators like Google News, reports from international health agencies, personal accounts and the musings of online discussion groups. That datum is integrated with field surveillance information about wildlife trade and wild animal hunting into a web-based, open-access system called HealthMap.org/predict that proponents hope will provide real-time intelligence about emerging pathogens.
INTERNATIONAL
The Guardian Mar 18, 2011
Sarah Boseley: Threat posed by multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is growing in Europe – and the numbers of children diagnosed with the disease is cause for concern
Reuters March 18, 2011
Rising rates of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (TB) are hampering world health programs aimed at tackling TB and threaten to wipe out progress made against the disease, scientists said on Friday.
Fierce Biotech March 17, 2011
When Pfizer was searching for a major acquisition in 2009, it saw a lot it liked in Wyeth--including an established vaccine group that could jump-start its own efforts in that area.
Kaiser March 16, 2011
Amid growing concerns over the long-term sustainability of access to affordable HIV/AIDS drugs, UNAIDS, WHO and the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) on Tuesday released a policy brief (.pdf) advising countries on how they can successfully use rules written into the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to lower the cost of and increase access to HIV treatment, Intellectual Property Watch reports.
From Emerg Infect Dis, published online Mar 16
Science Speaks Blog 16 Mar 2011
Kevin M. DeCock, MD, director of the Center for Global Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaks with Science Speaks about the fight against TB. In his own words, "TB remains very important. Here are a few research priorities for TB, and I think you can classify the research in different ways: operational, developmental, and epidemiological.
WHO Flu Center to Be Set in China
China Daily 15 March 2011 | Asia
The National Influenza Center of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has been designated as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, making China the first developing country to house such an institution.
BBC March 15, 2011
The cholera epidemic affecting Haiti looks set to be far worse than officials had thought, experts fear.
Rather than affecting a predicted 400,000 people, the diarrhoeal disease could strike nearly twice as many as this, latest estimates suggest.
Kaiser March 15, 2011
On the heels of the release of a draft report by an independent panel of experts examining the WHO's response to H1N1 (swine flu), BMJ News reports on a recently approved resolution and accompanying report released by the European Union parliament that calls on EU countries to revise their flu prevention plans "to make them more effective, coherent, and flexible" and for the WHO to revise its definition of pandemic to take into account not only geographical spread of disease but also severity.
Nature News Mar 14, 2011
Helpful bacteria don't just aid digestion; they also fend off the flu, according to a report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Newsweek Mar 13, 2011
By falsely accusing a Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses of infecting hundreds of children, Libya managed to blackmail its way to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of aid.
University of Queensland Media Release 11 Mar 2011
A new line of defence has been established against global health problems and infectious diseases, with the official opening of the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre in Brisbane. The Governor-General, Dr Quentin Bryce AC, declared the Centre open at an event at Customs House this evening hosted by The University of Queensland. The AIDRC will be located at UQ's St Lucia campus.
CIDRAP News Mar 11, 2011
Researchers from the University of Michigan say one measure of flu vaccine efficacy that has been used in a number of past controlled trials is not very accurate, and that this may have led to a degree of overselling of the protection the vaccines provide.
AFP March 11, 2011
The H1N1 swine flu that swept the globe in 2009/10 could easily morph into a more transmissible form, while an older, mid-20th century virus could also come roaring back, scientists warned this week in separate studies.
Journal of the International AIDS Society 2011, 14:11doi:10.1186/1758-2652-14-118 March 2011
Abstract (provisional) Despite proven sex and gender differences, women continue to be underrepresented in clinical trials, and the absence of gender analyses in published literature is striking. There is a growing advocacy for consideration of women in research, in particular in the HIV field, and gender mainstreaming of policies is increasingly called for.
The Guardian Mar 10, 2011
The political will to get tough on lifestyle sins has much to do with how far the swing voter has given them up
ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE
The Age (Australia) March 13, 2011
AUSTRALIANS spooked by the swine flu pandemic have driven a rise in the use of antibiotics in the past two years, undoing the work of health campaigns and prompting concerns about the rise of so-called superbugs
The Hindu (Op Ed) March 8, 2011
India faces the challenge of inappropriate use of antibiotics while Bharat copes with poor access to treatment, resulting in a policy conundrum and inaction.
RJWF has created an online tool called ResistanceMap to track trends in antibiotic-resistant pathogens like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in the United States. (See ResistanceMap homepage)
HPV
FIGO 17 March 2011
Home testing for the human papillomavirus (HPV) could increase the uptake of cervical screening, new research has revealed. According to Cancer Research UK, an alarming number of women still do not respond to screening invitations. The research, which was published in the British Journal of Cancer, looked at 3,000 women who had failed to attend at least two screenings
University of Sydney 14 Mar 2011
The public 'recruitment' campaign promoting the new cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil has done little to educate adolescent girls about the cause of the cancer, University of Sydney researchers Kellie Burns and Kate Russell have found.
SAPA Mar 14, 2011
Over two-thirds of South African women risk developing cervical cancer, in light of a worrying local increase in Human Pappiloma Virus (HPV)-related diseases, the University of the Witwatersrand said on Monday.
SCIENCE SPEAKS INTERVIEW SERIES: HIV and TB
The Center for Global Health Policy’s Science Speaks blog’s five part series of brief interviews with infectious disease leaders about research and development issues in HIV and TB.
Science Speaks Blog March 14, 2011
Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, is director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Last week Dr. Collins returned to the United States after an eight-day trip to South Africa, during which he attended a meeting of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative that drew a large group African researchers and medical educators to Johannesburg; a conference of the African and Southern African Association of Human Genetics in Cape Town; and a trip to the KwaZulu-Natal province to visit a clinical trial site for microbicides for women. John Donnelly interviewed him upon his return.
Science Speaks blog March 10, 2011
John Donnelly talks with Dr. DeCock Thursday about the large numbers of critical HIV research questions today, the need for a coordinated response to address those questions, and what to do about the explosion of HIV incidence among teenage girls in parts of sub-Saharan Africa discussed by Dr. Quarraisha Abdool Karim in an earlier part of this “Research Frontlines” series. This is the third part of the series, which focuses on research and the HIV epidemic.
Science Speaks blog March 11, 2011
John Donnelly interviewed Michael P Johnson, deputy director of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH),Thursday in Bethesda, MD. Johnson had just returned from South Africa, where he took part in the launch of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative(MEPI), a $130 million program funded by PEPFAR and NIH to build research and clinical work at African medical schools. This is the fourth and final part of the “Research Frontlines” series that explores HIV research issues.
Science Speaks blog March 9, 2011
Quarraisha Abdool Karim, PhD, is an infectious diseases epidemiologist whose research involves understanding the evolving HIV epidemic in South Africa; factors influencing acquisition of HIV infection in adolescent girls; and sustainable strategies to introduce antiretroviral medicines in resource-constrained settings. She is an associate professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and is an associate professor in Public Health and Family Medicine at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Science Speaks blog March 8, 2011
Kaitlin Christenson is coalition director for the Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC), an organization with more than three dozen member-groups that work on neglected diseases, including HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The coalition, formalized just two years ago, advocates for more research and backs new U.S. policies to accelerate the development of new drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and other tools for these diseases.
