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Since they arrived in the Great Lakes in the 1980s, two species of mussels the size of pistachios have spread to hundreds of lakes and rivers in 34 states and have done vast economic and ecological damage. These silent invaders, the quagga and zebra mussels, have disrupted ecosystems by devouring phytoplankton, the foundation of the aquatic food web, and have clogged the water intakes and pipes of cities and towns, power plants, factories and even irrigated golf courses. Now the mussels may have met their match: Daniel P. Molloy, an emeritus biologist at the New York State Museum in Albany...

LAS VEGAS – Health officials urged tuberculosis testing for hundreds of babies, family members and staff who were at a Las Vegas neonatal intensive care unit this past summer, saying they want to take extra precautions after the death of a mother and her twin babies and the infection of more than 26 people. Authorities with the Southern Nevada Health District said Tuesday that they're working to contact parents of about 140 babies who were at Summerlin Hospital Medical Center's NICU unit between mid-May and mid-August, and have set up a temporary clinic to test them. Tests of hospital staff...

A nanoparticle-based cancer therapy has been found to thwart an antibiotic-resistant, sexually transmitted infection in mice A first step has been taken toward a treatment for gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease (STD) notorious for its high reinfection rates. This news comes within days of a troubling update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that placed the STD on a list of “urgent threats”(PDF) in the fight against drug-resistant bacteria. According to the CDC, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacteria that causes the malady in humans—which can initially result in painful inflammation and discharge, and can cause infertility and even death if...

Pinning down an effective way to combat the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, the viral precursor to AIDS, has long been a challenge for scientists and physicians, because the virus is an elusive one that mutates frequently and, as a result, quickly becomes immune to medication. A team of Drexel University researchers is trying to get one step ahead of the virus with a microbicide they've created that can trick HIV into "popping" itself into oblivion. Previous image Enlarge Close Next image / Like Us on Facebook Its name is DAVEI - which stands for "Dual Action Virolytic Entry...

A blood test developed by Duke University researchers will help doctors learn whether a patient's infection is caused by a virus or bacteria. A blood test developed by researchers at Duke University can predict with tremendous accuracy whether someone with, say, pneumonia has a viral or bacterial infection, even if it's a previously unknown strain. The test, described today in the journal Science Translational Medicine, could someday help stop the unnecessary prescribing of antibiotics to patients who have viral infections. Although the study's authors say the timing of their report is coincidental, on Monday the director of the U.S. Centers...

Each year, more than two million people in the United States develop antibiotic-resistant infections, and at least 23,000 of them die as a result, says the first-ever national snapshot of the issue. That toll only rises when other conditions exacerbated by these infections are included in the count. Because itÂ’s difficult to attribute a death directly to antibiotic-resistant microbes (as opposed to illnesses that put the person in the hospital to begin with), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says these figures probably underestimate the scale of the problem. CDC today released the findings as part of a...

What makes some people slender and others full-figured? Besides diet and genetics, the community of microbes that lives inside us may be partially responsible. New research on twins suggests that lean people harbor bacteria that their obese counterparts don't have. And, given the chance, those bacteria may be able to prevent weight gain. But don’t dig your skinny jeans out of the closet just yet. So far, the work has been done only in mice. What's more, the bacterial takeover requires a healthy, high-fiber diet to work, illustrating the complex relationship between diet, microbes, metabolism, and health. Our intestines are...

VAIL, COLO. – The strategy of a short course of probiotics prescribed to prevent development of Clostridium difficile–associated diarrhea in patients on antibiotic therapy for any of myriad indications is attracting serious attention in both pediatrics and adult medicine. Interest in this low-cost and demonstrably low-risk preventive strategy has been driven by a recent favorable meta-analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration. Dr. Samuel Dominguez The Cochrane analysis included all 23 randomized controlled trials of probiotics for the prevention of C. difficile–associated diarrhea in adults or children taking antibiotics. The trials, three of which were conducted in children, included 4,213 subjects, none...

More than 300 bottlenose dolphins have stranded themselves along the US East Coast this summer, and now researchers think they know why: they are sick. Preliminary tests suggest that cetacean morbillivirus, a cousin of the virus that causes measles in humans, is killing dolphins from New York to North Carolina, officials with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said today. Since 1 July, 333 dolphins have beached themselves, more than twice the normal yearly average for that stretch of coastline, prompting NOAA to declare an ‘unusual mortality event’ on 8 August. Many of the dolphins that have washed...

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Late summer is peak Lyme disease season. As a result, Sen. Charles Schumer has urged the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study new and potentially fatal tick-borne illnesses.The New York Democrat has urged the CDC to look into two diseases that have already been found in the state.Schumer noted that New York City and on Long Island lead the state in Lyme disease infections. play Schumer Calls For More Research Into Tick-Borne DiseasesWCBS 880's Monica Miller Reports In addition to Lyme disease, ticks are known to carry Babesiosis, Powassan virus and Borrelia miyamotoi.Schumer said those diseases are...

Ever since people in the Middle East started dying of a mysterious new infection last year, scientists have been trying to pinpoint the source of the outbreak. Now they may finally have found a clue in an unlikely population: retired racing camels.

DENVER — A Colorado man who died of West Nile virus last year was likely infected through a blood transfusion, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. The man, who was undergoing treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, began developing West Nile symptoms after 29 days in the hospital, sharply narrowing the number of ways he could have been exposed to the virus, according to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. He died after 47 days in the hospital. Eighteen days prior to showing symptoms, the patient received a blood transfusion that health officials now believe contained...

A new drug candidate has shown promising signs in treating tuberculosis. The synthetic molecule is effective in mice and bears no similarity to existing TB drugs, many of which have become inadequate as drug-resistant bacterial strains have developed. If it is shown to be safe and effective in humans, it could help to combat a disease that killed 1.4 million people in 2011. A team led by Kevin Pethe, a microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute Korea near Seoul, investigated more than 120,000 compounds over 5 years, infecting mouse immune cells called macrophages with Mycobacterium tuberculosis — the bacterium that causes...

Scientists have discovered a marine microbe-derived antibiotic that has the ability to kill the deadly Anthrax bacterium Bacillus anthracis and other pathogens such as the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.Bacillus anthracis spores as viewed in scanning electron microscopy (© National Academy of Engineering) Prof William Fenical with colleagues from the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography first collected Streptomyces sp. - a marine microorganism that produces the compound – in 2012 from sediments close to shore off Santa Barbara, California.Using an analytical technique known as spectroscopy, they then deciphered the unusual structure of a molecule isolated from Streptomyces sp....

Herpes simplex virus 1 has an internal pressure eight times higher than a car tire, and uses it to literally blast its DNA into human cells, according to a new study published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.Dr Alex Evilevitch and his colleagues provide the first experimental evidence of a high internal pressure of tens of atmospheres within Herpes simplex virus 1, resulting from the confined genome. NPC – nuclear pore complex (Bauer DW et al) The study provides the first experimental evidence of high internal pressure within a virus that infects humans – a phenomenon previously...

The triatomine beetles that transmit Chagas disease are known as kissing bugs because they tend to feed on peopleÂ’s facesScientists in the US and Spain have synthesised the combinations of sugars from the surface of the Chagas disease parasite that trigger the human immune response to it. This could help establish better diagnostic tests for the disease, and even a vaccine.Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. The parasite is transmitted by contaminated food, blood transfusions and blood sucking beetles commonly known as kissing bugs. After a phase of acute local infection, the disease becomes chronic and can...

Public-health officials discount role of sex in people's response to flu and other infections. Sabra Klein came to the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Reproduction this week armed with a message that might seem obvious to scientists who obsess over sex: men and women are different. But it is a fact often overlooked by health researchers, says Klein, an immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. Her research on influenza viruses in mice, presented at the meeting in Montreal, Canada, helps explain why women are more susceptible to death and...

Microbiologists are trying to work out whether use of antibiotics on farms is fuelling the human epidemic of drug-resistant bacteria. The sight of just one boot coming through the doorway cues the clatter of tiny hoofs as 500 piglets scramble away from Mike Male. “That's the sound of healthy pigs,” shouts Male, a veterinarian who has been working on pig farms for more than 30 years. On a hot June afternoon, he walks down the central aisle of a nursery in eastern Iowa, scoops up a piglet and dangles her by her hind legs. A newborn piglet's navel is an...

By differentiating between bacterial and viral fevers, a new test may help doctors decide whether to prescribe antibiotics. Fevers are a common symptom of many infectious diseases, but it can be difficult to tell whether viruses or bacteria are the cause. By measuring gene activity in the blood of 22 sick children, Gregory Storch, a pediatrician and infectious disease researcher at Washington University in St. Louis and colleagues were able to distinguish bacteria-sparked fevers from ones kindled by viruses. The activity of hundreds of genes changed as the children’s immune systems responded to the pathogens, but the team found that...