Imagine that an invisible, microscopic invader has found its way into your body and hijacked the cellular machinery that keeps you healthy. Inhabiting the gray area between living and nonliving, the invader can only reproduce once it makes its new home inside of your cells, eventually causing you to fall ill. How do physicians and scientists combat this uninvited guest? (more…)
Epidemiology and gene sequencing technologies have been used by researchers in the UK, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the US and Canada to show that the novel Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus can spread between people in healthcare settings. The work is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The scientists, from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health, UCL, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University of Toronto, University of Colorado and Johns Hopkins University, rapidly investigated and defined the epidemiology, transmission dynamics and genetic composition of the MERS-CoV cluster of 22 cases of healthcare-acquired MERS coronavirus infections from a recent outbreak in Al-Hasa, Eastern Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (more…)
