News for Africa Doc

(University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston) Two clones of highly antibiotic-resistant organism strains, which previously had only been identified in the United States, are now causing serious sickness and death in several Colombian cities including the capital Bogotá, say researchers at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. The study, done in collaboration with Universidad El Bosque in Bogota, is presented in a research letter published in the Nov. 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

(American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene) "Airport malaria" is a term coined by researchers to explain the more recent spread of malaria to areas such as the United States and Europe, which some scientists credit to warmer climate changes.

(Purdue University) A Purdue University researcher has created a compound that prevents replication of the virus that causes SARS and could lead to a treatment for the disease. In addition to its ability to block the SARS virus, the molecular compound that inhibits the virus provides new insights into a group of proteins found in a range of diseases including childhood croup, herpes and cancer.

(Oxford University Press) A high proportion of people are not using condoms when they have sex with a new partner, according to a new study of heterosexual partnerships among British men and women, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. Among people in their 30s and 40s, and in partnerships where there is an age difference of five or more years, condom use is particularly low.

(University of Michigan Health System) It's a leading cause of death, but no one knows for sure how and why it happens. It's a major source of health care costs, adding days or weeks to the hospital stays of millions of people. But no one fully understands how best to fight it. Now, new research is tackling the problem at its most basic level, in hopes of finding new and more effective ways to treat bacteremia and sepsis.

(Rice University) Can scientists create a designer drug that forces viruses to mutate themselves out of existence? A new study by Rice University bioengineers could help make it happen. The study, which will appear in Physical Review E, offers the most comprehensive mathematical analysis to date of the mechanisms that drive evolution in viruses and bacteria, and it could help scientists who are looking to add "lethal mutagenesis" to medicine's disease-fighting arsenal.

(Medical College of Georgia) Cancer cells are already stressed by the fast pace they require to grow and spread and scientists believe a little more stress just may kill them.

(University of California - Los Angeles) Immune cells lose the ability to divide as they age because a part of their chromosomes known as a telomere becomes progressively shorter with cell division. As a result, its disease fighting ability is compromised. A new study finds that a chemical from the Astragalus root, frequently used used in Chinese herbal therapy, can prevent or slow this progressive telomere shortening, which could make it a key weapon in the fight against HIV.

(University of California - San Francisco) The team lead by Drs. Mario Ostrowski, of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine, and Douglas Nixon, of the Division of Experimental Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has discovered that a molecule called Tim-3 is present at high levels on poorly functional immune system cells which are "exhausted" from fighting HIV infection. The researchers found that blocking the activity of Tim-3 on these cells improved their function and allowed them to rejoin the battle against HIV.

(Rockefeller University Press) In HIV-infected patients, the body's immune system is unable to fight off the virus. A new study to be published online on Nov. 10 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine shows that T cells in HIV-infected individuals express a protein called TIM-3, which inactivates their virus killing capacity. Blocking this protein, the study suggests, might one day help patients to eliminate HIV as well as other chronic infections.

(University of Melbourne) Ninety years after Australian scientists began their race to stop the spread of Spanish flu in Australia, University of Melbourne researchers are hoping records from the 1918 epidemic may hold the key to preventing future deadly pandemic outbreaks.

(New York- Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center) On Nov. 8 and 9, Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University Medical Center will host an "Innovations in Pediatric Medicine" conference at the Grand Hyatt New York, which will feature lectures by international leading authorities in pediatric biomedical research, genetic findings and stem cell therapy breakthroughs.

(Queen's University) Although infection control has been substantially ramped up in Canadian hospitals since the SARS crisis of 2003, the number of resistant bacterial infections post-SARS have multiplied even faster, a new Queen's University study shows.

(American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene) Long believed to be a disease of biblical times, leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, continues to be seen in the United States.

(American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) The anti-herpes drug acyclovir can also directly slow down HIV infection by targeting the reverse transcriptase enzyme, researchers report. This beneficial effect does pose a risk though, as HIV-infected cells treated with acyclovir promote the emergence of multi-drug resistant HIV variants.

(University of Georgia) New research, just published by researchers from the University of Georgia, provides the first evidence that a key gene may be crucial to maintaining the production of the thymus and its disease-fighting T cells after an animal's birth.

(American Friends of Tel Aviv University) Tel Aviv University pioneers a high-tech system to cut hospital-related infections by half.

(Medical College of Georgia) The Medical College of Georgia announced today that it has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will support an innovative global health research project conducted by Dr. Pandelakis A. Koni titled "Antibody-Dependent Cellular Cytotoxicity Targeted Against HIV-1 Env Glycans."

(Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center) Education has found its way onto the soccer fields of North Carolina -- in the form of a social experiment that may have all the right ingredients to change the direction of Latino health in the United States.

(Columbia University Medical Center) A multicenter research team, led by Columbia University Medical Center, has uncovered a major contributor to the cause of stomach cancer -- the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the world. The team described for the first time, that elevated levels of a single proinflammatory cytokine, an immune system protein called interleukin-1 beta, can start the progression towards stomach cancer.