An international team of researchers is shining new light on “co-infections,” infectious diseases that attack the body simultaneously. The findings offer insights for treating malaria and worm infections and can help public health officials disentangle how infectious diseases compete in the human body. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — Dengue fever and West Nile fever are mosquito-borne diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide each year, but there is no vaccine against either of the related viruses.
A team of scientists at the University of Michigan and Purdue University has discovered a key aspect both to how the viruses replicate in the cells of their host and how they manipulate the immune system as they spread. (more…)
Discovery resulted from study of amphibians in ponds
The richer the assortment of amphibian species in a pond, the more protection that community of frogs, toads and salamanders has against a parasitic infection that can cause severe deformities, including the growth of extra legs.
The findings, published in a paper in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, support the idea that greater biodiversity in large-scale ecosystems, such as forests or grasslands, may also provide greater protection against diseases, including those that affect humans.
A larger number of mammal species in an area may curb cases of Lyme disease, while a larger number of bird species may slow the spread of West Nile virus. (more…)
The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible.
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Following a three-year study using more than 2,800 mice, a University of Missouri researcher was not able to replicate a series of previous studies by another research group investigating the controversial chemical BPA. The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible. The MU study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also investigated an estrogenic compound found in plants, genistein, in the same three-year study.
“Our findings don’t say anything about the positive or negative effects of BPA or genistein,” said Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor of biomedical sciences in MU’s Bond Life Science Center. “Rather, our series of experiments did not detect the same findings as reported by another group on the potential developmental effects of BPA and genistein when exposure of young occurs in the womb.” (more…)
