Virology News

The H1N1 influenza strain that brought on the 1918 flu pandemic causes a severe immune-system response that most likely is what makes the virus so deadly to a host animal or person, according to a new study appearing in the Oct. 5 concern of the journal Nature. The research counters the conventional wisdom on the 1918 flu – that a secondary infection from yet another virus helped make the pandemic one of the deadliest inside the modern era.

Researchers at the University of Washington and other institutions studied the response of lung cells in mice infected using the virus. They conducted a functional genomic analysis of those cells to monitor which genes were activated through the course of an infection. Researchers identified that many genes associated to immune responses had been activated, as had been genes associated to programmed cell death, which occurs when the body kills off infected cells to stave off an infection.

So the "cytokine storm" speculations are now backed up.  So what does H5N1 do?

Picture courtesy Russell Kightley Media

The back story of the new cervical-cancer vaccine includes, among its many twists: Warts, Italian nuns, a virus old as humanity, a German scientist...

Quite a nice historical account of how HPV vaccines - or one of them, anyway - came to be.  Of course, HPVs almost certainly evolved a lot longer than a million years ago, but that's by the bye.

Yellow fever is endemic not only in South Africa, but also in 33 other countries of the continent with a combined population of 508 million. ..., Srikanth Radhakrishna...

THERE.  IS.  NO.  YELLOW.  FEVER.  IN.  SOUTH.  AFRICA. 

Are we clear on this?  Unless it is imported from another country - because it is assuredly NOT endemic!!  And irresponsible statements like this do not help anyone - except certain vaccine clinics.

Australia was the first country to introduce a free HPV vaccination program for girls but the US and Canada have moved first to routinely vaccinate boys.

Australia must act quickly to vaccinate schoolboys against human papillomavirus (HPV) or risk lagging behind other developed countries, health experts say.

Makes sense: affects mainly women, but spread by both sexes.  Pity it COSTS so much.

Image courtesy Russell Kightley Media

According to analysts of the World Bank, the immediate impact due to such flu pandemics would not be the loss of lives but it is the shock cause to the economy, which could provide a thumping blow. When the world became technologically advanced and scientifically competent, the loss of life associated with flu pandemics decreased phenomenally and it is evident when thinking of the enormous loss of life due to the flu pandemic in 1919s, which was estimated to be about 50 million deaths, with the confirmed loss of 1500 – 2000 lives due to H1N1 pandemic.

All the more reason to vaccinate, then!  Image courtesy of Russell Kightley Media

Cures for AIDS may have failed because we don't fully understand how HIV evolves, a researcher says.

University of Adelaide researcher Jack da Silva has used computer simulations to discover that even in early infection when the virus population is low, HIV rapidly evolves to evade immune defences and treatments.

His findings, published in GENETICS journal, challenge the belief that evolution of the virus under these circumstances is very slow.

iBio's ($IBIO) shares have jumped 21% with the announcement that it has completed the first Phase I clinical trial of its plant-based vaccine for H1N1 influenza, HAC1. The study of the vaccine, produced by iBio's partner the Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology, aimed to assess the vaccine's safety, as well as looking for early clues to its ability to trigger an immune response against the flu virus.

The study showed that the vaccine was safe and well-tolerated at low and high doses, regardless of whether an adjuvant was used. The vaccine also triggered immune responses, with the best immune response seen in the people who received the highest dose of the vaccine without an adjuvant. This was a similar response to a marketed flu shot.

Read more: iBio shares jump with flu shot clinical trial - FierceVaccines http://www.fiercevaccines.com/story/ibio-shares-jump-flu-shot-clinical-trial/2012-03-22#ixzz1prIpScl0

Going green: the right thing to do.  Image courtesy Russell Kightley Media

Here we report the detection of serological responses against EBV capsid antigens in healthy dogs and dogs with spontaneous lymphoma and that dogs with the highest antibody titers have B cell lymphoma. Moreover, we demonstrate the presence of EBV-like viral DNA and RNA sequences and Latent Membrane Protein-1 in malignant lymph nodes of dogs with lymphoma. Finally, electron microscopy of canine malignant B cells revealed the presence of classic herpesvirus particles. These findings suggest that dogs can be naturally infected with an EBV-like gammaherpesvirus that may contribute to lymphomagenesis and that dogs might represent a spontaneous model to investigate environmental and genetic factors that influence gammaherpesvirus-associated lymphomagenesis in humans.

VERY interesting...a most unexpected place to find a useful human model for herpesvirus disease!

Transitions between saline and fresh waters have been shown to be infrequent for microorganisms. Based on host-specific interactions, the presence of specific clades among hosts suggests the existence of freshwater-specific viral clades.

Polio cases in Africa were almost halved in 2011, but the disease shows worrisome trends in some countries, health officials reported today as the continent geared up to vaccinate 111 million children against the disease.

Although polio cases tripled in Nigeria, Africa's only polio-endemic country, from 21 in 2010 to 62 in 2011, the continent's overall count dropped from 657 in 2010 to 350 in 2011, according to an update in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The 1-year drop, however, was entirely attributed to a decline in cases reported from periodic outbreaks in one country, the Republic of Congo.

Eight African countries experienced intermittent polio outbreaks in 2011, with transmission interrupted in six of them, according to the report. However, such outbreaks accounted for just 58 cases in 2011, compared with 477 in 2010.

The lion's share of this drop resulted from the situation in the Republic of Congo, which reported 441 polio cases in 2010 but only 1 in 2011. Cote d'Ivoire had the most outbreak-related cases in 2011, with 36, after recording none in 2010.

Last year's trends were mixed in the three African nations where polio transmission has become reestablished. Cases dropped from 33 in 2010 to 5 in Angola and from 100 to 93 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) but increased from 26 to 132 in Chad.

A welcome development - maybe polio will be the third virus to be eradicated??

Image courtesy of Russell Kightley Media

What can I say: slow day.

Here we devised a chemoenzymatic labeling strategy to site-specifically append probes to the influenza hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) proteins using the bacterial sortase A enzyme. Because labeling is confined to surface exposed HA and NA in the context of live, infected cells, it is possible to study budding biochemically and microscopically in real-time. Using this system, we can observe budding of flu virions from discrete sites at the cell surface. Our work will enable detailed investigation into the birth of viruses from infected host cells and can likely be applied to viruses other than influenza that have been similarly resistant to real-time microscopic observation during budding.

Virology tools just get better and better.

'More Doctors 'Fire' Vaccine Refusers,' according to a recent headline in the Wall Street Journal. Some physicians have had enough of parents with unfounded medical concerns who won't vaccinate their children.

First Rule of the Herd: shun freeloaders.

London: Viruses which often cause dangerous infections could soon be the latest weapon in the war against cancer, scientists have claimed.

A team of researchers in the US have claimed that they are creating viruses that would be weak to damage healthy cells but strong enough to destroy cancer cells.

Scientists have already known that viruses can weaken cancer since the turn of the century.

However, early efforts to use this knowledge to cure patients largely failed as recovery was only temporary and sometimes sufferers died of the infection. Research into cures
then shifted to other treatments.

But, now following new understanding about genetics and how viruses and cancers work together, doctors have realised that specially tailored viruses might be the answer.

Viva!  Viruses, viva!

"We want people to have informed choice when it comes to vaccines." These words, or at least something along these lines, are uttered by many anti-vaccine activists, like Barbara Loe Arthur (aka Barbara Loe Fisher) of the misnamed National Vaccine Information Center or the authors at Age of Autism. To hear them speak, you would imagine that they would be completely in favor of any efforts which strive to provide accurate, complete information to parents who are deciding whether or not to have their children vaccinated. Such efforts should be whole-heartedly embraced by these "pro-informed consent" warriors.

There are something like THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND anti-vaccination web sites right now.  Boycott one today!

A genetic marker that may protect some people against HIV infection has been found, a new study from researchers in France suggests.

This genetic marker occurs less frequently in people infected with HIV than in people who do not have the virus, the study showed.

If confirmed, it would be the second genetic marker ever found to give people some resistance to the infection that causes AIDS. The only such marker known to date is a particular mutation in a gene called CCR5. This gene, which is found in about 1 percent to 2 percent of people of European decent, provides near-complete protection against HIV infection, the researchers say.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/03/22/new-genetic-marker-may-protect-some-people-against-hiv/#ixzz1prILSOxR

Image courtesy Russell Kightley Media