A team of scientists led by chemist and Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Pioneer laureate Piet Gros and medical microbiologist Jos van Strijp from Utrecht University have…

In England and Wales, the national health statistics in 2007 showed that there were 8,324 death certificates which named Clostridium difficile. This is a bacterium which causes severe diarrhea in…

One odd characteristic of H1N1 influenza A (swine flu) in 2009 is that it seems to hit children much harder than the elderly, an about-face from ordinary flu.   So targeting children may be an…

Fire drills are conducted to know what it will be like in an actual fire incident. The main objective of fire drills are to asses how fast can people evacuate the buildings safely, if ever they catch…

Are parasites evolving to be more or less aggressive depending on whether they are closely connected to their hosts or scattered among more isolated clusters of hosts?  Research led by Geoff…

The secret to any good recipe is knowing how things happen in a system and the recipe for diseases is no different.  Many diseases have crucial proteins which change the dynamics of cells from…

Since April 15 and 17, 2009, when the first two cases of novel influenza A (H1N1) infection were identified from two southern California counties, novel influenza A (H1N1) cases have been documented…

Avian influenza viruses do not thrive in humans because the temperature inside a person's nose is too low, according to research published today in PLoS Pathogens. The authors of the study, from…

Recently I had the opportunity to ask Paul Ewald, one of the nation's leading evolutionary biologists, about a subject near and dear to his heart: the evolution of a bug, specifically swine flu. As…

The death toll due to malaria outbreaks has reached over million lives every year with an additional 300-500 million people suffering illness from serious malaria infections. The growing pandemic and…