Category: Science and Tech
New Covid Tests Are Here. They Test for Flu, Too.
NYT Yet again this winter, millions of Americans will wonder if a nagging cough or body aches is a sign they’re coming down with Covid or the flu. This time, they’ll have an expanded array of tools to get an answer without leaving the house. There are now nine at-home tests that can detect the […]
Oct 29, 2024
Advanced technologies for the development of infectious disease vaccines
Nature Vaccines play a critical role in the prevention of life-threatening infectious disease. However, the development of effective vaccines against many immune-evading pathogens such as HIV has proven challenging, and existing vaccines against some diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria have limited efficacy. The historically slow rate of vaccine development and limited pan-variant immune responses […]
Oct 22, 2024
Novel mRNA vaccine prevents and treat C. difficile
Penn Today Penn Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have developed the first mRNA vaccine against C. difficile to successfully ward off the bacterial infection. A new vaccine provides hope for treating and even preventing the highly contagious and difficult-to-treat Clostridioides difficile infection, more commonly known as C. difficile or C. diff. In animal models, this first mRNA-LNP C. difficile vaccine was […]
Oct 22, 2024
Scientists discover concerning behavioral changes in chimps: ‘Could something so small have prevented the pandemic?’
Yahoo News Scientists have found that chimpanzees are turning to bat feces for nutrients in concentrated areas of deforestation, which could have implications for human epidemics, reports Mongabay. What’s happening? In the Budongo Forest in Uganda, animals — including chimpanzees, monkeys, and antelope — rely on minerals from decaying palm trees, per the report. However, between […]
Oct 16, 2024
Viruses Found on Toothbrushes Are ‘Unlike Anything Seen Before’
Gizmodo Scientists have discovered over 600 different species of bacteria-hunting viruses living in our common bathroom items, though the microbes pose no harm to people. Some of the most diverse environments in the world can be found right in our bathrooms—virally speaking. Scientists swabbed people’s toothbrushes and showerheads and found them brimming with hundreds of […]
Oct 9, 2024
What Happens When Humans Become Guinea Pigs to Advance Science
Bloomberg In early 2020, it was assumed that most people who contracted Covid would fully recover in two to three weeks. Months later, we learned that a significant proportion of survivors are plagued by lingering symptoms that we now recognize as long Covid. In 2021, analyses of electronic health record data showed how Covid patients, […]
Oct 8, 2024
BARDA awards $29 million to Basilea Pharmaceutica for first-in-class anti-fungal treatments
BARDA BARDA awarded an initial $29 million under an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) to Basilea Pharmaceutica International Ltd. Allschwil, to develop two anti-fungal therapeutics, Fosmanogepix and BAL2062, both with the potential to treat drug-resistant invasive fungal infections. Additional funding could be awarded by BARDA if contract options are exercised. Under the terms of the OTA […]
Sep 25, 2024
Surprising New Research Links Infant Mortality to Crashing Bat Populations
NYT Without bats to eat insects, farmers turned to more pesticides, a study found. That appears to have increased infant deaths. The connections are commonsense but the conclusion is shocking. Bats eat insects. When a fatal disease hit bats, farmers used more pesticides to protect crops. And that, according to a new study, led to […]
Sep 10, 2024
Humans infecting animals infecting humans − from COVID-19 to bird flu, preventing pandemics requires protecting all species
The Conversation When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, humans had been the only species with reported cases of the disease. While early genetic analyses pointed to horseshoe bats as the evolutionary hosts of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, no reports had yet surfaced indicating it could be transmitted from humans to […]
Sep 4, 2024
Detection and spread of high pathogenicity avian influenza virus H5N1 in the Antarctic Region
Nature Until recent events, the Antarctic was the only major geographical region in which high pathogenicity avian influenza virus (HPAIV) had never previously been detected. Here we report on the detection of clade 2.3.4.4b H5N1 HPAIV in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions of South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, respectively. We initially detected H5N1 HPAIV […]
Sep 3, 2024