TBR

Study Links Ebola Outbreaks To Animal Carcasses

All recent Ebola virus outbreaks in humans in forests between Gabon and the Republic of Congo were the result of handling infected wild animal carcasses, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and its regional partners. Appearing in the February edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the study found that many animal carcasses tested for Ebola between 2001 an...

UN pours polio vaccine into Yemen amid outbreak

As Yemen geared up for an end-of-month nationwide campaign to immunize all children under 5 against a fast-moving paralytic poliovirus outbreak, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it was shipping in 6 million doses of polio vaccine. In addition, 10 experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) are working with national coordinators and helping to train vaccinators and sup...

Poaching, logging, and outbreaks of Ebola threaten central African gorillas and chimpanzees

Experts call for $30 million action plan to save mankind's closest relatives An action plan drafted by more than 70 primatologists and other experts who met in B...

New Vaccine To Be Used For First Time In Polio Outbreak Response

Eighteen new cases of polio have today been announced in Yemen, bringing the reported total number associated with an outbreak in the country to 22. Yemen had been polio-free since disease surveillance began in 1996 - a genetic investigation is ongoing to determine the precise origin of the outbreak. Experts fear that the number of cases will rise in the immediate future. Teams of WHO and...

Monkeypox mystery: New research may explain why 2003 outbreak in the US wasn't deadly

An outbreak of 72 cases of monkeypox in the United States during the summer of 2003 didn't produce a single fatality, even though the disease usually kills 10 percent of those infected. In this month's issue of Virology, researche...

Tulane researcher reports on origin of deadly fever outbreak

Bats or other cave dwelling animals may have been responsible for the deadly 1998?000 outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever among gold miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to an article in the Aug. 31, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Daniel G. Bausch, associate professor of Tropical Medicine at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical...

New tools used to control foodborne hepatitis A outbreaks related to green onions

Novel use of genetic testing methods helped public health officials control and limit the further spread of four outbreaks of foodborne hepatitis A virus in 2003 related to the consumption of green onions, according to a detailed analysis published in the October 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. The authors of the study, Joseph J. Amon, PhD, MSPH, and c...

Researchers develop new testing methods for potential monkeypox or smallpox outbreak

Researchers at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute (VGTI) at Oregon Health & Science University have developed new diagnostic methods to better detect future monkeypox or smallpox outbreaks. The research also sheds new light on the 2003 monkeypox outbreak in the Midwest -- monkeypox is closely related to smallpox. This new information suggests that the 2003 outbreak was larger than the 72...

Preventing a pandemic: Study suggests strategies for containing a flu outbreak

Though quick to caution about the many things that could go wrong, researchers say that it may be possible to contain a Southeast Asian outbreak of avian influenza in humans, buying precious time for the production of a vaccine. Using a computer model to simulate an outbreak in a rural Southeast Asian population, the scientists have shown how a combination of strategies, including targeted...

Same-sex mating by fungi spawned infection outbreak, evidence suggests

Same-sex mating between two less harmful yeast strains might have spawned an outbreak of disease among otherwise healthy people and animals on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Howard Hughes Medical Institute geneticists at Duke University Medical Center have reported. The fungus, Cryptococcus gattii, is normally restricted to the tropics and subtropics. The researchers said their findin...

Pattern of human Ebola outbreaks linked to wildlife and climate

A visiting biologist at the University of California, San Diego and her colleagues in Africa and Britain have shown that there are close linkages between outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in human and wildlife populations, and that climate may influence the spread of the disease. The decade-long study, published this month (with a cover date of January) in the journal Transactions of th...

Ebola-outbreak kills 5000 gorillas

The study also provides new hope for controlling the devastating impact of Ebola on wild gorilla and chimpanzee populations. Since reports of ape die-offs first circulated widely in 2003, sceptics have doubted how large these die-offs were and whether Ebola was even the cause. The new study, led by Magdalena Bermejo of the University of Barcelona, allays these doubts because it was conducted in a...

Ebola outbreaks killing thousands of gorillas and chimpanzees

Why have large outbreaks of Ebola virus killed tens of thousands of gorillas and chimpanzees over the last decade? Observations published in the May issue of The American Naturalist provide new clues, suggesting that outbreaks may be amplified by Ebola transmission between ape social groups. The study provides hope that newly developed vaccines could control the devastating impact of Ebola on wil...

Smallpox outbreak: How long would it take for vaccines to protect people? Would it work?

In the event of a smallpox outbreak in the United States, how long would it take for a vaccinSLU scientist leads national studye to start protecting Americans by stimulating an immune response? General routine vaccinations for smallpox were stopped in the United States in...

Restricting hospital-based services during SARS outbreak had modest impact

Restrictions on the non-urgent use of hospital-based services that were imposed when a provincial health emergency was declared during the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in Toronto, Ontario, resulted in only modest reductions in overall admissions. In this study, Dr. Michael J. Schull and colleagues determined that restrictions on the non-urgent use of hospital-based se...