Infectious Disease

Vaccinating pregnant women against the influenza virus appears to have a significant positive effect on infant birth weight.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) superseded HIV as a cause of death by 2007; and birth cohort screening is cost-effective for HCV.

Malaria kills more people each year than previously recognized -- nearly 1.2 million people worldwide -- with more than 40 percent of deaths occurring in older children and adults, according to research published in the Feb. 4 issue of The Lancet.

Liver-like cells produced from an individual's own cells can support the entire life cycle of hepatitis C virus, potentially making it possible to study why people respond differently to the virus, according to a study published online Jan. 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Two Lyme disease risk foci have been identified in the Northeast and upper Midwest of the United States, according to a study published in the February issue of The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

The 2012 recommended childhood and adolescent vaccination schedules have been approved, according to a policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics published in the February issue of Pediatrics.

In this video, Martin Blaser, MD, chairman of the department of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, discusses the possible relationship between exposure to antibiotics in infancy and increased rates of obesity.

Just days after Saudi Arabia donated $25 million to the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $750 million, in addition to the $650 million donated over the last 10 years.

A recent measles outbreak described in the Jan. 20 edition of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report provides a stark reminder of the potential consequences of vaccine refusal and the vigilance required of health care providers to prevent such occurrences from growing out of hand.

The top 5 percent of U.S. hospitals has more than a 30 percent lower risk-adjusted mortality across 17 procedures and diagnoses, compared with other hospitals, according to the 10th annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study published online Jan. 24.

Approximately half of all adults at high risk of hepatitis B infection are vaccinated against hepatitis B, and more than half miss opportunities to be vaccinated, according to a study published online Jan. 12 in Infection.

The current flu season has been relatively quiet so far—especially when compared to the recent H1N1 riddled seasons—but the CDC still maintains that precautions against influenza must be taken.

Complications as a result of prostate needle biopsy (PNB) have increased in recent years, though they remain infrequent enough that patients should go through with the procedure when deemed necessary by medical providers, researchers report.

Hospitals looking to be prepared for a sharp increase in patients during flu season may be better off monitoring trends in Internet search traffic than waiting for lagging government reports to arrive, Johns Hopkins University researchers report.

In hospitals and other medical settings, any surface touched by multiple people can serve as a medium for spreading viruses and bacteria—even a computer keyboard. That’s where the Vioguard self-sanitizing keyboard, which was approved for use in health care settings last week by the FDA, comes in.

For the first time ever, a US government advisory board has asked several scientific journals to withhold details of experiments out of concern that terrorists could use the information in question to create deadly pathogens and trigger epidemics.

An experimental HIV vaccine using a killed whole virus and developed at the University of Western Ontario in Canada has received approval from the FDA to begin human clinical trials next month, the university has announced.

A multi-state outbreak of infection with Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli that occurred in 2009 has been traced back to an unlikely source: uncooked commercial prepackaged cookie dough.

National Influenza Vaccination Week took place from December 4th to the 10th, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took advantage of this opportunity by stressing the importance flu vaccinations.

In the afternoon session "mHealth at the Point of Care" at the mHealth Summit in National Harbor, MD, Bella Hwang spoke about an SMS program in Kenya that not only helped improve medication in AIDS patients, but also promised to do so in a highly economical way.