Immunology

In this century, vaccine denial is primarily located in progressive hotbeds of states like California, rooted in distrust of science. It's an embarrassment for Democrats, who pride themselves on being more scientific than Republicans, to see that right-wing states like Mississippi and Alabama have negligible exemption rates while supposedly more educated places like California, Washington and Oregon lead the charge in bringing back dangerous infectious diseases. Even President Obama, who in 2008 catered to them by saying he believed vaccines might be causing autism, has come around on the…

Don't look so worried Cromwell, she's just asleep. BBC/Company Productions Ltd By Derek Gatherer, Lecturer at Lancaster University. In the first episode of BBC historical drama Wolf Hall, based on Hilary Mantel’s novel of the same name, Thomas Cromwell returns home to find his wife and two daughters have all died during the night, victims of a pestilence – the “sweating sickness” – that is scything through the Tudor world. The speed of onset of this disease, which saw victims literally being well today and dead tomorrow, and its relentlessly high mortality rate gave the sweating sickness the…

Skin provides an essential protective barrier against foreign materials and pathogens and helps the body retain various fluids and electrolytes. When that barrier is damaged, the consequences can be devastating. Ulcers, bleeding and bacterial infections may result and the chances of these occurring increases the longer wounds remain open.  Fortunately, epithelial cell sheets are self-repairing. The moment the integrity of the barrier is compromised, cellular mechanisms are initiated to close the gap. Cells begin crawling forward, and contractile cables are formed in the cells surrounding…

The UK has just recorded its second outbreak of bird flu in less than three months. At the end of November, the relatively new subtype H5N8 – which was first spotted in late 2009 in China and which has since made its way westwards as far as the Netherlands – turned up in Yorkshire. Now the rather more familiar bird flu subtype H7N7, which has long-established American and Eurasian variants, has appeared on a poultry farm in Hampshire. Bird flu: Livestock and farmers most at risk. Shutterstock So what is bird flu and why are public health authorities so wary of it? Here’s what you need to know…

By Joel N. Shurkin, Inside Science (Inside Science) - In nature — the rule goes — everything is connected to everything else, so it is possible that when you combine two methods of preventing a deadly disease, bad things can happen. A team of researchers, working with a computer model found that could be true in the fight against malaria, one of humankind's greatest scourges. Combining anti-mosquito netting with a certain type of potential vaccine for the disease, they found, could lead to more illness and deaths. They published the results in January in the Proceedings of the National…

There are up to 400 chemical compounds on human skin that could play a role in attracting mosquitoes. sookie, CC BY-SA By Cameron Webb, University of Sydney There’s always one in a crowd, a sort of harbinger of the oncoming mosquito onslaught: a person mosquitoes seem to target more than others. What is it about these unlucky chosen few that makes them mosquito magnets? There are hundreds of mosquito species and they all have slightly different preferences when it comes to what or who they bite. But only females bite; they need a nutritional hit to develop eggs. Finding someone to bite…

Some media, such as the New York Daily News and NBC, have reported that the Asian H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza has now entered the United States. This is incorrect and they were told it was not the same strain by the United States Geological Survey and then suggested it was anyway. There was avian flu that was recently found, in a green-winged teal in Washington state, but it is a different strain and is not known to harm humans nor has it been found in domestic poultry. The duck, harvested by a hunter, tested for avian flu. H5N1 is a highly pathogenic avian…

If you are in the United States and travel to Mexico, you are cautioned not to drink the water, just like if you travel to Taiwan or China you are cautioned not to eat chicken bought from a street vendor; people are immune to some nasty stuff you probably are not. Getting diarrhea in Mexico is called Montezuma's revenge - it means the natives are still getting back at the Spanish 500 years later and the rest of the world is thrown in for good measure. But it doesn't just end there. Taking antibiotics for diarrhea may put travelers visiting developing parts of the world at higher risk for…

Interbreeding of two malaria mosquito species in the West African country of Mali has resulted in a "super mosquito" hybrid that's resistant to insecticide-treated bed nets. Anopheles gambiae, a major malaria vector, is interbreeding with isolated pockets of another malaria mosquito, A. coluzzii. Entomologists initially considered them as the "M and S forms" of Anopheles gambiae. They are now recognized as separate species. Interbreeding of two malaria mosquito species in the West African country of Mali has resulted in a "super mosquito" hybrid that's resistant to insecticide-treated bed…

It's not new that dwellers and cities are a little less hearty than rural cousins. There is even a hygiene hypothesis that says kids in the country get dirtier to their benefit and that wealthy, educated helicopter parenting and all those hand sanitizers and antibacterial soaps are doing more harm than good. Allergies and numerous autoimmune diseases, such as asthma and type 1 diabetes, have become more common in the past 50 years, especially in urban environments. The belief is this is caused by urban issues like pollutants from human activities, a higher level of hygiene and the reduced…