ANN ARBOR — University of Michigan scientists and their colleagues used glowing fluorescent gel to test the potential effectiveness of vaccines to control rabies and other diseases in wild bats. (more…)
Women could prevent contracting the mosquito-borne Zika virus while pregnant by timing the first months of pregnancy with seasonal declines in mosquito activity, according to a new paper. The paper is the first to suggest that women in the numerous countries affected by the Zika virus epidemic can still safely pursue motherhood rather than forgo pregnancy altogether. (more…)
Yale scientists have solved a puzzle of the immune system: how antibodies enter the nervous system to control viral infections. Their finding may have implications for the prevention and treatment of a range of conditions, including herpes and Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has been linked to the Zika virus. (more…)
Herpes is forever.
When one of the sexually transmitted virus’ two strains enters the body through genital tissue,
it travels to neurons near the spine that the body’s defenses have learned not to kill – even when infected – because they don’t regenerate easily. And there the virus hides, occasionally reactivating to cause blisters that can break to cause painful sores. Ripe to invade a sexual partner. (more…)
Animal research suggests ibuprofen can reduce lung inflammation in elderly
COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research shows that the lungs become more inflammatory with age and that ibuprofen can lower that inflammation.
In fact, immune cells from old mouse lungs fought tuberculosis bacteria as effectively as cells from young mice after lung inflammation was reduced by ibuprofen. The ibuprofen had no effect on the immune response to TB in young mice. (more…)
The idea of everyone in a community pitching in is so universal that even bacteria have a system to prevent the layabouts of their kind from enjoying the fruit of others’ hard work, Princeton University researchers have discovered.
Groups of the bacteria Vibrio cholerae deny loafers their unjust desserts by keeping the food generated by the community’s productive members away from V. cholerae that attempt to live on others’ leftover nutrients, the researchers report in the journal Current Biology. The researchers found that individual bacteria produce a thick coating around themselves to prevent nutrients from drifting over to the undeserving. Alternatively, the natural flow of fluids over the surface of bacterial communities can wash away excess food before the freeloaders can indulge. (more…)
There is no approved medicine to treat polyomaviruses, which afflict people with weakened immune systems, but scientists have found that a chemical compound called Retro-2 is able to reduce significantly the infectivity and spread of the viruses in lab cell cultures. Now they are working to improve it.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A team of scientists reports that a small-molecule compound showed significant success in controlling the infectivity and spread of three polyomaviruses in human cell cultures. To date there has been no medicine approved to treat such viruses, which prey on transplant recipients, people with HIV, and others whose immune systems have been weakened. (more…)
Environmental conditions have a much stronger influence on the mix of microbes living in various parts of your body than does competition between species. Instead of excluding each other, microbes that fiercely compete for similar resources are more likely to cohabit in the same individual.
This phenomenon was discovered in a recent study of the human microbiome – the vast collection of our resident bacteria, fungi, and other tiny organisms. (more…)
