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A rapid rise in reports from around the world of a deadly fungal infection is sounding alarm bells about the dangers of drug resistant diseases. First discovered in Japan in 2009, Candida auris is a type of yeast that can cause severe illness and spreads easily in healthcare facilities. Cases proliferated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Widespread infections in the United States led the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to label it an “urgent threat”. More recently, scientists in China called for closer monitoring of the potentially fatal fungus after a study found that almost all of the cases...

Antiviral drugs are generally considered to be a 20th century invention. But recent research has uncovered an unexpected facet to your immune system: It can synthesize its own antiviral molecules in response to viral infections. My laboratory studies a protein that makes these natural antiviral molecules. Far from a modern human invention, nature evolved cells to make their own “drugs” as the earliest defense against viruses. How antivirals work Viruses have no independent life cycle – they are completely dependent on the cells they infect to supply all the chemical building blocks needed to replicate themselves. Once inside a cell,...

A study has unveiled a previously unrecognized role for an essential nutrient in shaping the cellular landscape for one of the body's first lines of defense against infection, immune cells called macrophages. The findings identifying a role for the nutrient choline under normal conditions and in response to an intestinal worm infection in mice could potentially have significant implications for other models of human infection, perhaps even cancer immunity. Dr. Morgan Fullerton explains that by blocking a specific part of metabolism the research team saw an unexpected defect emerge in macrophages—sentinel cells that are one of the immune system's star...

New research reveals a marked increase in several common conditions in the years leading up to, and immediately prior to, type 2 diabetes diagnosis, suggesting considerably earlier diagnosis might be possible in some patients. "These novel insights suggest an early phase of inflammation-related disease activity long before any clinical diagnosis of type 2 diabetes is made," says Dr. Adrian Heald. To find out more, researchers analyzed 1,932 adults with and without type 2 diabetes. The trajectory analysis revealed that for individuals eventually diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a number of common conditions increased consistently in the years leading up to...

New research shows that an antibiotic effective for bacterial pneumonia also appears to fight treatment-resistant staph infections. The drug is ceftobiprole. It appeared successful in fighting methicillin-resistant staph infections, sometimes called MRSA. It showed similar benefit when tested against the antibiotic daptomycin to treat complicated Staphylococcus aureus infections. This means it could offer another option against this common and often deadly bacterial infection, according to the research led by Duke Health in Durham, N.C. "This is an area of true need," Dr. Thomas Holland, associate professor at Duke University School of Medicine and chair of the study's data review committee,...

Most bacterial and viral infections are contagious, and different types of pathogens may lead to symptoms of varying severity. Some illnesses may require antibiotics or antiviral treatments, while others may be prevented with the help of vaccinations. In this article, we take a look at the primary differences between bacterial and viral infections. We explore how these infections are transmitted and treated and what you can do to prevent getting and passing them on.

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- There's been a spike in the number of COVID-19 workplace outbreaks in Los Angeles County over the past month. As more and more employees return to in-person work, it's not surprising there's been an increase. L.A. County health officials say the rise in cases remind us the risk of COVID infection is always present.

The recently detected BA.2.86 COVID-19 subvariant may be more capable of causing infections in people who previously contracted the virus or have been vaccinated, according to a risk assessment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), though it remains unclear if this strain causes more severe illness than others. First detected last month, a handful of infections caused by BA.2.86 have been reported in the U.S., Denmark, South Africa, the U.K. and Israel. The CDC noted that genomic sequencing of COVID-19 has dropped “substantially” when compared to the past few years, so the spread and occurrence of new...

America is in the midst of an explosion of sexually transmitted diseases as these maps compiled by DailyMail.com using official data show. Using the most up-to-date Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, they show how every state has seen a spike in cases of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to organ damage, and gonorrhea, an STD that can cause infertility, between 2017 and 2021. Only chlamydia, the most common STD in the US, appeared to have infection rates plateau - but the suspicion is that fewer tests are being done. Overall, infection rates of syphilis...

he government is releasing thousands of illegal immigrant children with latent tuberculosis infections into American communities without assurances of treatment. Nearly 2,500 children with latent infections were released into 44 states over the past year, according to a court-ordered report on how the Health and Human Services Department is treating the children. About 126,000 total were released, indicating an infection rate of 1 in 50 migrant children. The government says it can’t treat the children because they are in custody for a short time and treatment requires three to nine months. HHS releases infected children to sponsors and notifies local...

Bacterial infections associated with ventilators may have caused most of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 among intubated patients, according to a study funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases that reinforces ongoing scrutiny of early treatment protocols and official COVID death figures. The findings could help explain why New York City, where ventilators were heavily used early in the pandemic, experienced a dramatic spike in COVID mortality even among non-elderly people that wasn't seen in areas with similar demographics and climate. The Big Apple went so far as splitting ventilators between patients amid a perceived shortage despite...

A study has found that compared with standard antibiotic treatment, stool transplantation can increase the number of people recovering from Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) infection, a condition that causes potentially life-threatening diarrhea. Within the study, 77% of people who received a stool transplant did not experience reinfection within eight weeks, compared to 40% of those who received antibiotics alone. Transplanting healthy donor stool into a gut with dysbiosis is intended to balance the gut microbes and reestablish a healthy microbiome, thus significantly reducing the risk of C. diff recurring. The US FDA has recently approved a stool transplant product for...

Earlier this week there were multiple reports from China about funeral parlors and crematoriums running above full capacity. A projection by a US based health group concluded that up to a million people in China could die from the virus now that China has abandoned its zero COVID approach. While all of this was happening under the gaze of foreign media outlets, official numbers from China said only a handful of people had died this month. Clearly something didn’t add up.Yesterday Bloomberg reported that leaked estimates from China’s top health authority paint a very different picture. China’s National Health Commission...

Chilly weather and common respiratory infections often go hand in hand. Now, a new study details a previously unknown way that the immune system attacks viral intruders inside the nose—and finds it works better when it's warm. The starting point was previous research which found that nasal cells released "extracellular vesicles" (EVs)—a spray of tiny sacs that swarmed and destroyed bacteria upon inhalation. "The best analogy that we have is a hornet's nest," said Amiji. Like hornets defending a nest from attack, EVs swarm, bind to, and kill invaders. For the new research, the team set out to answer two...

BEIJING, Nov 24 (Reuters) - China reported record high COVID-19 infections on Thursday, with cities nationwide imposing localised lockdowns, mass testing and other curbs that are fuelling frustration and darkening the outlook for the world's second largest economy. The resurgence of infections, nearly three years after the pandemic emerged in the central city of Wuhan, casts doubt on investor hopes for China to ease its rigid zero-COVID policy soon, despite recent more targeted measures.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led people to wear face masks daily in public. Although the effectiveness of face masks against viral transmission has been extensively studied, there have been few reports on potential hygiene issues due to bacteria and fungi attached to the face masks. We aimed to (1) quantify and identify the bacteria and fungi attaching to the masks, and (2) investigate whether the mask-attached microbes could be associated with the types and usage of the masks and individual lifestyles. We surveyed 109 volunteers on their mask usage and lifestyles, and cultured bacteria and fungi from either the face-side...

South Korean health officials said on Wednesday that total COVID-19 infections in the country have reached 10 million amid a surge in severe cases and deaths, Reuters reported. South Korea’s total caseload as of Tuesday was 10,427,247, with a virus-related death toll of 13,432, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), per Reuters.

COVID-19 case and hospitalization rates increased among people who got a COVID-19 vaccine following the emergence of the Omicron virus variant, according to newly published data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).According to the data, which is submitted to the CDC by health departments across the country, the COVID-19 case rate in fully vaccinated people rose by more than 1,000 percent between Dec. 11, 2021, and Jan. 8, 2022.Fully vaccinated refers to people who received two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines, or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.The CDC doesn’t count a person as...

Israel has always been the most important country to judge the mRNA Covid vaccines.Why?It has nearly total adult vaccine coverage. Efforts to blame "the unvaccinated” for whatever is happening won’t hold. Israel has good data - far more complete and up-to-date than American figures. And it vaccinates quickly, so whatever impact the vaccines are having rolls through the population (and the data) quickly.But most of all, Israel matters because Israel was first. It mass vaccinated with Pfizer’s mRNA first and it boosted first. And human biology is the same everywhere.So what happens in Israel happens in all the other mRNA...

The Omicron COVID-19 variant is about to infect millions of Americans in a “viral blizzard” of cases, a leading expert has warned. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota, highlighted data from the Big Apple as proof that “outbreaks are starting to occur” from the worrying new variant. “I think we’re really just about to experience a viral blizzard,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday. “In the next three to eight weeks, we’re going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus,” he said, citing...