Epidemic in Biological News

Exposure to insecticide may play role in obesity epidemic among some women

EAST LANSING, Mich. Prenatal exposure to an insecticide commonly used up until the 1970s may play a role in the obesity epidemic in women, according to a new study involving several Michigan State University researchers. More than 250 mothers who live along and eat fish from Lake Michigan were...

Global warming linked to European viral epidemic

An epidemic of the viral disease nephropathia epidemica (NE) has been linked to increases in the vole population caused by hotter summers, milder winters and increased seedcrop production by broadleaf trees. Research published in BioMed Central's open access International Journal of Health Geogra...

Physical activity may not be key to obesity epidemic

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A recent international study fails to support the common belief that the number of calories burned in physical activity is a key factor in rising rates of obesity. Researchers from Loyola University Health System and other centers compared African American women in metropolitan...

15-state Southern obesity summit to focus on deadly epidemic

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. With Thanksgiving and end-of-the-year holidays coming soon, many Americans will eat, drink and get heavier. It is a challenging season for those working to control and reverse our nation's obesity epidemic. Luckily this is an opportune time to remind everyone of the problem an...

Sudden Oak Death pathogen is evolving, says new study that reconstructs the epidemic

Berkeley - The pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death first got its grip in California's forests outside a nursery in Santa Cruz and at Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County before spreading out to eventually kill millions of oaks and tanoaks along the Pacific Coast, according to a new study led by res...

Lethal needle blight epidemic may be related to climate change

Increased summer precipitation apparently helping to spread spores of pathogen Biologists studying a lethal blight of lodgepole pines in northwestern British Columbia present strong evidence in the September issue of BioScience that climate change is to blame for the outbreak. The blight, caused...

Sleeping Sickness Epidemic Spreading in Uganda

A drug first used to reduce the risk of stomach ulcers in people taking certain types of painkillers offers an alternative to surgery after miscarriage, according to a study by researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health and other...

Understanding biases in epidemic models important when making public health predictions

Mathematical models have become invaluable decision-making tools for public health officials. As demonstrated during the United Kingdom's foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001, models can be useful in two ways: they can reveal the underlying characteristics of an infection and they can allow the comparis...

121 breeding tigers estimated to be found in Nepal

...y low, with a recent government census suggesting there may be as few as 1,300 tigers left in India, the species' stronghold. And tigers are facing an epidemic of poaching and habitat loss across their range. The main reason for the decline of tiger populations has been attributed to poaching and illegal t...

Knee injuries may start with strain on the brain, not the muscles

...aper, McLean's group again tested the single leg landings of 13 men and 13 women after working the legs to fatigue. While both men and women suffer an epidemic of ACL injuries, women are two to eight times likelier to tear this ligament than men while playing the same sport. However, the study showed that men...

Forsyth scientists suggest linkages between obesity and oral bacterial infection

...r, the inflammatory nature of the disease is also recognized. This led me to question potential unknown contributing causes of obesity. Could it be an epidemic involving an infectious agent?" "It is exciting to image the possibilities if oral bacteria are contributing to some types of obesity," added Goodson....

Researchers engineer metabolic pathway in mice to prevent diet-induced obesity

... In recent years, obesity has taken on epidemic proportions in developed nations, contributing significantly to major medical problems, early death and rising health care costs. According to Centers...

Study suggests obese women should not gain weight

...icense to eat. We talk about 'eating for two,' but it's really more like eating for 1 and 1/20th." These attitudes have contributed to the obesity epidemic in the U.S., where 35 percent of women are considered obese, says the researcher. The situation is even worse among African-American women, four out o...

Jeepers creepers: Climate change threatens endangered honeycreepers

...Islands had no mosquitoes and no mosquito-borne diseases. But, by the late 1800s, mosquitoes had set up permanent housekeeping, setting the stage for epidemic transmission of avian malaria and pox. Honeycreepers just like people faced with novel viruses such as swine flu had no natural resistance against t...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- May 13, 2009

...of Proteome Research , a monthly publication. About 18 million people in the United States have Type 2 diabetes, and the disease is spreading with the epidemic of obesity. David Springer and colleagues point out in the new study that thousands of patients receive potentially lifesaving transfusions of plat...

Does mom know when enough is enough?

... St. Louis, MO, May 11, 2009 As the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States continues, researchers are examining whether early parent and child behaviors contribute to the problem. A study from the Departm...

Demmler-Harrison honored for devoted work with pediatric society

...breaking panel, entitled "H1N1 Influenza A: What the Pediatrician Needs to Know," where she discussed management of high volume virology testing in an epidemic situation and effective infection control strategies. "Gail Demmler is a true leader in pediatric virology," said Jeffrey Starke, M.D., director of ...

Women more vulnerable to tobacco carcinogens, new results show

...greater risks to women than men. "In the early 1900s lung cancer was reported to be rare in women, but since the 1960s it has progressively reached epidemic proportions, becoming the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States," Dr Felip said. "Lung cancer is not only a man's disease...

Social separation stops flu spread, but must be started soon

... a 'worst case' influenza epidemic. They may be critical in holding back an epidemic until vaccines are deployed on a sufficient scale that subsequent relaxatio...within 2 weeks of the first case appearing in a town or city, to prevent an epidemic developing. Delays of 2, 3 and 4 weeks resulted in final attack rates of 7%...

Caltech scientists show why anti-HIV antibodies are ineffective at blocking infection

... PASADENA, Calif.--Some 25 years after the AIDS epidemic spawned a worldwide search for an effective vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), progress in the field seems to have effectively be...

Nutrition experts propose new class of low-sugar drinks to help stem obesity and diabetes epidemics

..., MA -- Strong evidence developed at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and elsewhere shows that sugary drinks are an important contributor to the epidemic rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes in the United States. Faced with these growing public health threats, experts from the Department of Nutrition at ...

American Chemical Society Weekly PressPac -- April 8, 2009

...ease, according to an article scheduled for the April 13 issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine. Obesity is a growing epidemic that affects more than 72 million people in the United States alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. C&EN assistant e...

Living long, living well

... Waltham, Mass.How does inflammation, brought on by stress, affect aging? What can we do to avert the looming public health and economic crisis of an epidemic of neurologic diseases caused by a rapidly expanding elderly population? How do older adults manage to keep a rosy outlook in the face of inevitable d...

New wheat disease could spread faster than expected

...s the potential to get a foothold and spread rapidly at this distant location giving the invading pathogen the ability to literally accelerate as the epidemic spreads. In just two years from 2004-06, the avian bird flu spread across parts of three continents in Africa, Europe and Asia, carried by migratin...

Scientists gather to protect global food security from return of devastating wheat fungus

...worldwide. In the 1950s, a fatal strain of wheat stem rust invaded North America and, at one point, ruined 40 percent of the spring wheat crop. The epidemic prompted Borlaug, working with a team of scientists in Mexico, to develop highly productive, rust-resistant varieties that helped launch the Green Rev...

Saving wheat crops worldwide

... CSIRO Plant Industry scientists and international collaborators have discovered the key to overcoming three major cereal diseases, which in epidemic years cost wheat growers worldwide in excess of AUS$7.8 billion. In a paper published today in the prestigious journal Science , scientists from C...

March of Dimes provides $2.7 million in new funding for preterm birth research

...ent preterm birth. These 2009 grants bring the five-year-old program's grant total to nearly $14 million. "This research is critical to ending the epidemic of preterm birth," said Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, president of the organization. "That's why we created the PRI grants and continue to award them even i...

American Chemical Society's weekly PressPac -- Jan. 14, 2009

...teome Research . The number of cases of that disease (18 million in the United States alone) has doubled during the last 30 years in parallel with the epidemic of obesity. Researchers say their work represents the first comprehensive description of the proteins in the saliva of patients with Type 2 diabetes, ...

IRB Barcelona to coordinate two European projects on biomedicine

...celona and senior professor at the University of Barcelona, will coordinate a pioneering project to fight against diabetes, a disease described as the epidemic of the XXI century. The MITIN Project is innovative because it will be the first time that bioinformatics is applied to obtain information about compl...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Dec. 17, 2008

...using bug-repelling plant hormones and insecticides, according to the article. ARTICLE #5 EMBARGOED FOR 9 A.M., EASTERN TIME, Dec. 22, 2008 "Beetle epidemic escalates" This story will be available on December 22 at http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/86/8651sci1.html FOR ADVANCE INFORMATION, CONTACT: ...

Forsyth scientist receives major grant to support rapid, accurate, affordable test for tuberculosis

...patient's urine. TB is a leading cause of death worldwide, with 1.7 million deaths and 9 million new active cases annually. TB cases are already at epidemic levels in Africa and are on the rise in developing countries throughout the world, particularly among HIV/AIDS patients. This resurgence combined wit...

Persistent pollutant may promote obesity

...su maintain that it is "plausible and provocative" to associate the obesity epidemic to chemical triggers present in the modern environment. Several other ubiqu... that tributyltin and similar persistent pollutants may play in the obesity epidemic is now under scrutiny. ...

Researchers recreate SARS virus, open door for potential defenses against future strains

...of the SARS coronavirus (CoV) that caused the SARS epidemic of 2003. The scientists say designing and synt...ogenesis and the ability of therapeutics targeting epidemic strains to cure bat SARS-CoV infection. SARS (...Although the strains associated with the 2002-2003 epidemic no longer circulate in humans, the animal precurso...

Positive results in Phase 2 trial of treatment of C-difficile-associated diarrhea

... over 500,000 cases in the United States, and approximately 15,000 deaths caused or contributed by C. difficile . The emergence of a highly virulent epidemic strain that produces much higher levels of toxins A and B has also been associated with morbidity and mortality in younger, healthier, and non-hospita...

ASU researchers receive NIH awards for studies of malaria and emergent disease

...nd evolutionary biology perspectives to address infectious diseases," says Escalante. "Events such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS epidemic and the spread of antimicrobial resistance have increased awareness about the need for incorporating laboratory-based research in decision-making proc...

The Marine Mammal Center begins new leptospirosis study in California

...e Director at The Marine Mammal Center. "The data will also help us understand more about the susceptibility of sea lions in the population during an epidemic and clarify the relationship between the stranded sea lions with leptospirosis we see here at the Center and those that are susceptible in the populat...

'Color My Pyramid' nutrition education program battles obesity in DC schools

... this epidemic. It was also different from other research projects because we both designed the education program and tested its effectiveness." The epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States is growing. Results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2003-04 National Health and Nutrit...

Hidden infections crucial to understanding, controlling disease outbreaks

... quickly, in a matter of weeks or months." The model revealed that as an epidemic spreads, many people develop this short-term immunity. Once large numbers of people are immune, the epidemic comes to a halt. "But before the year is out, they're susceptible again," a...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Sept. 10, 2008

...an and the United Kingdom are reporting. The findings could lead to the development of a new chamomile-based drug for type 2 diabetes, which is at epidemic levels in this country and spreading worldwide, they note. Their study appears in the Sept. 10 issue of the ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Che...

New gene variant identified for nondiabetic end stage renal disease in African-Americans

...isproportionately as they have a four-times-higher incidence of end stage renal disease compared to European Americans. "We are in the midst of an epidemic of chronic kidney disease, in which African Americans are disproportionately affected. This finding does not mean that non-genetic factors, such as so...