Encephalitis in Biological News

Tips from the Journals of the American Society for Microbiology

... from patients hospitalized with symptoms of encephalitis and meningitis, and tested them for the presence ... HHV-6 in specimens from patients diagnosed with encephalitis or meningitis, in the absence of a positive PCR ... methods in specimens from patients diagnosed with encephalitis or meningitis. Journal of Clinical Microbiology, ...

West Nile virus' spread through nerve cells linked to serious complication

... we already knew that the most likely cause of encephalitis was virus in the blood breaking through the ... injections were above the suture developed both encephalitis and paralysis because the virus was able to ... day after the viral injection, it blocked both encephalitis and paralysis. The antibody, developed by ...

Singapore nanotechnology combats fatal brain infections

... and destroy bacteria and fungal cells that could cause fatal infections and are highly therapeutic. Major brain infections such as meningitis and encephalitis are a leading cause of death, hearing loss, learning disability and brain damage in patients. IBN's peptide nanoparticles, on the other hand, ...

Study characterizes eczema patients most at risk for dangerous viral infections

... herpes simplex virus is common but only rarely causes disseminated skin infections that can spread to the eye and bloodstream sometimes leading to encephalitis and meningitis. The widespread herpes simplex skin infection is known as eczema herpeticum. Vaccinia virus, which is used in smallpox ...

UCI awarded $45 million for infectious disease research

... acquired by humans through either direct contact or an insect or tick. These include tularemia (also known as rabbit fever), Lyme disease, West Nile encephalitis and Lassa fever. Improved detection of and vaccine development for coccidioidomycosis (also known as valley fever), a fungal disease that ...

Redefining what it means to be a prion

... together in brain cells. Brain matter in PrP-infected animals takes on a spongy appearance, lending the condition its formal name, bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE). Unlike other proteins, the misfolded PrP protein is transmissible. When the misfolded PrP protein is introduced to healthy cells, it can ...

New CU-Boulder study shows diversity decreases chances of parasitic disease

... and disease prevalence have been suggested by other researchers to influence other vector-borne diseases, including West Nile virus, tick-borne encephalitis and bubonic plague, he said. "In the absence of parasites, the toads and frogs are pure competitors," Johnson said. "But when trematode ...

Tick-borne encephalitis virus reveals its access code

... Fritz et al. have identified an amino acid switch that flaviviruses flip to gain access to cells. Flaviviruses such as tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV), yellow fever, and dengue are dangerous human pathogens. These membrane-encircled viruses enter cells by being gobbled up into endosomes ...

No more big stink: scent lures mosquitoes, but humans can't smell it

... Journal or PLOS One, could play a key role in surveillance and control programs for Culex species, which transmit such diseases as West Nile virus, encephalitis and lymphatic filariasis. Oviposition or gravid female traps draw blood-fed mosquitoes ready to lay their eggs, but the chemical- and ...

USGS news: August science picks

... from as early as the previous fall through early summer, impact mosquito populations. The mosquito species examined Culex tarsalis, carry encephalitis and West Nile Virus. To conduct this research, the science team, which included two USGS researchers, analyzed more than 50 years of weekly mosquito ...

UCSF researchers identify virus behind mysterious parrot disease

... in Savannah, GA. The new virus, which the team named Avian Bornavirus (ABV), is a member of the bornavirus family, whose other members cause encephalitis in horses and livestock. Working with veterinarians on two continents, the group isolated this virus in 71 percent of the samples from infected ...

The Uukuniemi virus helps to explain the infection mechanism of bunyaviruses

... The Uukuniemi virus helps to explain the infection mechanism of bunyaviruses causing hemorrhagic fevers and encephalitis A researcher group comprising Juha Huiskonen from the University of Helsinki and structural biologists from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm ...

Northwestern to expose most deadly infectious diseases in 3-D

... Anderson's gallery will be filled with the not-so-pretty genetic portraits of proteins from the plague, cholera, rabies, West Nile virus, viral encephalitis and Ebola, just to name a few. He'll also be looking at newly emerging diseases and drug resistant infections. His team -- which includes researchers ...

Inheriting a tendency to brain infection

... was little published evidence that herpes simplex encephalitis ran in families, which suggested to him that if a ... proportion of patients with herpes simplex encephalitis had parents who were blood relatives --often ... into the intensive care unit with herpes simplex encephalitis may be treated with both the standard antiviral, ...

Scientists show that tick-borne flaviviruses use a novel mechanism to evade host defenses

... yellow fever virus, dengue virus and Japanese encephalitis virus; the less-familiar tick-borne flaviviruses are just as serious, causing tick-borne encephalitis or hemorrhagic fevers. Currently, a Japanese encephalitis outbreak is raging in India and Nepal and has ...

NYU study reveals how brain's immune system fights viral encephalitis

... Recently, the West Nile virus has been responsible for a viral encephalitis outbreak in the northeast. The NYU researchers set out to determine how ... which can be replaced. The researchers attributed the spread of viral encephalitis to the inability of lab mice to produce sufficient amounts of interferons ...

NYU Study Reveals How Brain's Immune System Fights Viral Encephalitis

... Recently, the West Nile virus has been responsible for a viral encephalitis outbreak in the northeast. The NYU researchers set out to determine how ... which can be replaced. The researchers attributed the spread of viral encephalitis to the inability of lab mice to produce sufficient amounts of interferons ...

Brain inflammation may be friend, not foe, for Alzheimer's patients

... of plaques in the brains of animals and a few people with the disease, but it’s also been fraught with difficulty, producing side effects such as encephalitis or severe brain inflammation in people with Alzheimer’s. “The potential to treat Alzheimer’s disease by modulating the immune system is ...

Blood-brain barrier breached by new therapeutic strategy

... to the nerve cells of the brain, the strip, called a small interfering RNA (siRNA), was shown to protect mice from infection caused by the Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV). Manjunath N. Swamy, M.D., of the CBR Institute for Biomedical Research and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and his colleagues used ...

Experimental vaccine given during pregnancy reduces stillbirths from common virus

... the information needed to make a protein involved in the infection process. The virus used to make the vector vaccine (Venezuelan Equine encephalitis Virus) was altered by removing 40 percent of the virus?genes, to prevent it from reproducing and infecting new hosts. The young female guinea ...

Einstein researchers demonstrate a novel approach to treating AIDS

... against a variety of disease-causing microbes­first the major fungal pathogen Cryptocccus neoformans, which can cause life-threatening encephalitis in AIDS patients and other people with weakened immune systems; then a streptococcal bacterium responsible for pneumonia; and now HIV. The ...

New strategy developed to combat West Nile Virus

... drought followed by continual summer rainfall is critical for the amplification and transmission of West Nile Virus and a similar disease, St. Louis encephalitis Virus, in southern Florida. When drought occurs early in the year, the limited water resources confine mosquito populations to selected habitats ...

Hopkins study suggests commercially available antibiotic may help fight dementia in HIV patients

... HIV. "We hope this research might help many patients with other forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer's, and infections of the brain, like herpes encephalitis and West Nile encephalitis," says Rumbaugh. "However, it will require a lot more development before drugs like these can be used even to treat ...

Genetic mutation linked to West Nile virus infection

... Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Bethesda, MD) recently showed that infection with WNV -- a mosquito-borne virus that caused a1999 outbreak of fatal encephalitis in the US -- was uniformly fatal in mice that lack CCR5. This finding prompted Murphy and his colleagues to look for the CCR5delta32 mutation in ...

Ocean virus identified in human blood samples

... research is needed to establish proof that infection with this virus in humans is causing liver damage or some other problems, which may include encephalitis and spontaneous abortion. The viral group being studied is the genus Vesivirus, one of four genera in the Caliciviridae viral family. Some ...

Serious adverse reactions to smallpox vaccine appear to be limited

... not anticipated based on historical data. Two cases of generalized vaccinia (a skin eruption in reaction to vaccination) and 1 case of postvaccinial encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) were detected. No preventable life-threatening adverse reactions, contact transmissions, or adverse reactions that ...

New NIAID grants strengthen national biodefense and emerging infectious diseases research network

... reach to cover some poorly understood diseases and new research needs. For example, researchers in the new centers have expertise in equine encephalitis and other viral diseases that can be transmitted to people by mosquitoes. The centers also add expertise in hantaviruses, as well as in the ...

Discovery could be key to bioterrorism defense

... level 4 facility. Nipah virus, which is similar to and in the same genus as Hendra, was initially isolated in 1999, when a large outbreak of encephalitis and respiratory illness occurred in Malaysia and Singapore, killing more than 100 people. Last year, two further Nipah virus outbreaks occurred in ...

NIAID begins clinical trial of West Nile virus vaccine

... or only mild symptoms, such as fever, headache and body aches; more serious cases can lead to infections of the brain and nervous system, such as encephalitis or meningitis. In 2004, 2,470 cases of WNV disease were reported in the United States, resulting in 88 deaths. Currently, no WNV vaccine is licensed ...

A new study examines how shared pathogens affect host populations

... considered as a negative factor for humans, wildlife, and species of agricultural importance. Many pathogens like malaria, Lyme disease or West Nile encephalitis that infect multiple hosts are commonly transmitted by vectors, and their transmission rate is often thought to depend on the proportion of hosts or ...

Antibiotic might fight HIV-induced neurological problems

... standard measures. After the same amount of time -- 84 days after infection -- five of the six untreated monkeys had evidence of moderate or severe encephalitis and much more physical evidence of damage to brain cells, the researchers report. "The infection in the animal model is predictable and ...