MicrobeWorld

One of the continuing mysteries of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is why women usually develop lower viral levels than men following acute HIV-1 infection but progress faster to AIDS than men with similar viral loads. Now a research team based at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH... Read More

A study published in Monday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences makes the case that the last century's deadliest pandemic, the 1918 Flu, may not have emerged from a sudden leap from birds to humans. Instead the authors theorize that swine played a big role in the virus' evolution u... Read More

Bloomberg news is reporting that the World Health Organization will recommend countries should stop trying to test all suspected cases of swine flu, according to Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s assistant director-general of health security and environment.

The WHO suggests countries that have repo... Read More

Dr Alan Hay, director of the London-based World Influenza Centre, said the extensive summer outbreak in Britain had not followed expected patterns and warned the Department of Health needed to be prepared for a more deadly form of the disease.

"We have been a little surprised by the degree of... Read More

The UK's Business Continuity Institute and The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union claima UK swine flu epidemic could severely disrupt transportation in London.

"There have now been 17 swine flu-related deaths in the UK, including six-year-old Chloe Buckley, from west London, who died o... Read More

French scientists have gained new insight into how the body protects itself from a protozoan parasite named Leishmania donovani which causes a disease called Kala azar. Everyone still with me here? Read More

Genes found in E. coli are also seen across other species, which suggests that not only are these previously unknown genes essential to survival, they might be important in future cancer research. Read More

In this series of four brief video clips from Washington State University produced by Adam Ratliff and Cherie Winner for Washington State Magazine Online, microbiologist Cynthia Haseltine describes how she's working to understand the process of DNA repair and the causes of lymphoma, ... Read More

A new post on the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists website reviews the U.S. Army's revised regulations for its biomedical labs. The updated requirements intends to clarify vague language in civilian biological agents guidelines. In addition, "the new regulations establish stricter controls on t... Read More

"A fully licensed swine flu vaccine might not be available until the end of the year, a top official at the World Health Organization said Monday, in a report that could affect many countries' vaccination plans.

But countries could use emergency provisions to get the vaccines out quicker if t... Read More

The New Scientist reports "vaccine producers have hit a snag making vaccine against the swine flu pandemic. According to a report by the World Health Organisation, the fastest-growing of all the vaccine strains tested so far grows only half as fast as ordinary vaccine viruses."

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On behalf of the ASM Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting Program Committee and the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), we invite you to participate in the 8th ASM Biodefense Research Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD February 21-24, 2010.

Since October 2001, ASM has focus... Read More

A recent paper published in PLoS One describes a systems biology approach that models how Staphylococcus aureus develops methicillin resistance.

The obtained results by our integrated approach show that the model describes correctly the whole phenomenon of the methicillin resistance and is ab... Read More

This article hearkens back to they day when leeches were considered a standard treatment for removing "bad blood." It's interesting that many are now starting to see some health value with parasitic worm infection, especially in the treatment of allergies. For example "one study conducted in Tai... Read More

The strain of influenza, A/H1N1, that is currently pandemic in humans has been shown to be infectious to pigs and to spread rapidly in a trial pig population.

In research published today in Journal of General Virology, Dr Thomas Vahlenkamp and a team of virologists from the Friedrich-Loeffle... Read More

Group B Streptococcus (GBS), a bacterial pathogen that causes sepsis and meningitis in newborn infants, is able to shut down immune cell function in order to promote its own survival, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Skaggs School of ... Read More

In this six-page article from Scientific American, editors go in-depth about the background on MRSA and the state of the disease today. The article continues by covering antibiotic drug development, ranging from the study of marine bacteria to genetic experiments designed to produce antibiotic-m... Read More

The Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or LIFE, is scheduled to be launched in October and includes specimens of thale cress and brewer's yeast, and a microbe known as Conan the Bacterium. The experiment isdesigned to show if living organisms can survive unprotected in space for long perio... Read More

In episode 40 of "This Week in Virology", hosts Vincent Racaniello, Dick Despommier, ... Read More

" An unexpected characteristic has emerged among many swine flu victims who become severely ill: They are fat."

"Doctors tracking the pandemic say they see a pattern in hospital reports from Glasgow to Melbourne and from Santiago to New York. People infected with the bug who have a body mass ... Read More