MicrobeWorld

Precambrian. About 700 million years ago, one of the most significant - and most mysterious - events in the history of life on Earth occurred. Suddenly, there was more to life than just single-celled microbes. Within a few tens of millions of years, an extraordinary array of large animals appear... Read More

A vast majority of the World Bank’s projects to combat AIDS failed to perform satisfactorily over the past decade, with the ones in Africa, the region at the epicenter of the pandemic, registering the worst record, according to a new internal evaluation.

Seven of 10 AIDS projects that the ban... Read More

The flu that is moving through humans appears to have a combination of genes from two normally separate sets of pigs, those from the Americas and from Eurasia, scientists say.

However, it is unknown how those pigs met, and there is not yet any genetic proof that this particular flu was ever i... Read More

On Wednesday, the new disease affecting thousands of people in Mexico and more than 100 in the United States and other countries was called swine influenza. By Thursday, the “S word” had been banned: A sentence in a box at the very top of the home page of the World Health Organization said, “Fro... Read More

How individual countries deploy their flu drugs may be key to determining the size of any pandemic that emerges from the current H1N1 outbreak. That's the conclusion of a mathematical model of flu transmission by an international team of researchers.

The findings also suggest that countries ... Read More

Adela María Gutiérrez fell ill in the beginning of April with what she thought was a bad cold. She tried aspirin and antibiotics, bed rest and moist towels, but nothing brought down her soaring fever, reduced her aches and pains, or boosted her energy level.

It would be more than a week befo... Read More

U.S. scientists say they've determined immune cells don't kill bacteria by damaging their DNA, reversing a widespread assumption in the scientific community.

The University of Illinois researchers said they discovered macrophages -- the immune cells that engulf and kill bacteria -- direct the... Read More

MUSC clinicians and researchers are actively monitoring the swine flu epidemic, linking their efforts to others at a state and national level. While concerned, we are prepared to respond to cases arising in the local area.

{mp3remote}http://medicaluniversc.http.internapcdn.net/medicalunivers... Read More

Researchers at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have now designed a unique method for inducing immunity to the infection. The findings could accelerate progress toward the development of a vaccine against Chlamydia trachomatis in... Read More

From the Washington Post: "Health Secretary Jose Cordova says nonessential federal government offices will be closed from May 1-5. He said all nonessential private businesses must also close for that period but essential services like transport, supermarkets, trash collection, hospital will rema... Read More

This blog post culls together a bunch of interesting articles on how swine flu has impacted the pork industry, the media, new media & more. Read More

NASA is preparing to launch a tiny satellite loaded with yeast and anti-fungal drugs early next month in order to better understand how bacteria becomes nastier in space.

The nanosatellite, known as PharmaSat, is only about the size of a loaf of bread and will hitch a ride as a secondary payl... Read More

“Containment is no longer a feasible option,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization, announced Monday night in Geneva after a meeting of the agency’s emergency committee on the spreading swine flu virus. “The world should focus on mitigation. We recommend not... Read More

Researchers from Durham University’s Centre for Bioactive Chemistry are developing methods that show how proteins interact with cell membranes when a virus strikes. Using their approach, the team hopes to find new ways to disrupt and disarm ‘enveloped viruses’ before they spread in our bodies.
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There is no vaccine for the current strain of swine flu - at least not yet. However, federal health authorities said two antiviral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, may play a key role in the response to the outbreak because they are in wide supply and, based on laboratory tests, appear to be effectiv... Read More

Bacteria that normally reside on the skin of healthy people can cause serious infections in premature babies. A group of researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have now found an explanation for why a certain kind of staphylococcus can attach itself to the skin and qu... Read More

A new study by University of Maryland researchers suggests that the potential for an avian influenza virus to cause a human flu pandemic is greater than previously thought. Results also illustrate how the current swine flu outbreak likely came about.

As of now, avian flu viruses can infect... Read More

The CDC's all in one Swine Flu website with resources, updates, guidelines and data. Read More

"The importance of fatty acid biosynthesis to bacterial survival has made the pathway fertile ground for antibiotic targets, and at least three companies are pursuing compounds that block the process. French researchers, however, have challenged the approach with a paper in Nature that describes... Read More

Swine flu is sweeping—if not the nation, then at least the nation's media. But what is special about this virus and what, if anything, should ordinary citizens do about it?

The new flu, which has elements of pig, bird and human flu viruses in it, has been circulating for at least a month in M... Read More