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Italian Skeletons Reveal Old World Diseases By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News Columbus: Syphilis Spreader? April 12, 2004 — Researchers investigating Italian cemeteries have found further evidence to confirm that syphilis and rheumatoid arthritis plagued the Americas long before the arrival of Columbus. Involving various sites throughout Italy, the study examined 688 skeletons dating from the Bronze Age to the Black Plague epidemic of 1485-1486. The remains were investigated for the presence of bony alterations characteristic of rheumatoid arthritis, gout, spondyloarthropathy and syphilis-causing organisms, called treponemes. Indeed, syphilis is known to scar and deform bones. Legend holds that Columbus and his...

Tracks Infectious Diseases WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - Programs that track health-related 911 calls and purchases of over-the-counter medication help health authorities in the state's largest city get a jump on tracking outbreaks of infectious disease. Officials say the 911 program, called FirstWatch, can do something else as well - even though they hope it will never have to. FirstWatch, which began tracking calls on Wednesday, is a "smoke detector for bioterrorism," said FirstWatch project director Matthew Ferguson. In the past, health officials have had to rely on reports from doctors and hospitals to track outbreaks. FirstWatch, however, is able to...

Please pray for our family friend, Jeff, hospitalized with necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating Strptoccocus bacteria) from a small cut to one of his fingers.Very touch and go. Better yesterday. Setback today.He's taking it well. But this is very dangerous.Clean and cover all open wounds, no matter how seemingly insignificant.Thanks, All.

LOS ANGELES, April 2, 2004—Jody Eldred Productions today announced it has just completed filming and is in the final stages of production on an inspirational documentary called, “Changed Lives: Miracles of The Passion,” which will air nationwide Easter weekend. With rave reviews from Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country,” this one-hour T.V. special was shot in High Definition and documents the true stories of people whose lives have been forever changed by Mel Gibson’s incredible motion picture “The Passion of The Christ.” “I knew instantly that people’s lives were going to be...

When Tanya Andrews returned from a recent family holiday in Costa Rica, she had no idea she had brought back a gruesome souvenir. A month later she developed an extremely painful lump on her head. At first, she thought she had an abscess, but then it wriggled. At the Hospital for Tropical Diseases they recognised the problem straight away - it was the living maggot larva of a botfly. While Tanya was enjoying her holiday a mosquito had delivered a tiny botfly egg onto the surface of her scalp. The egg hatched into a maggot and burrowed deep inside. Incredibly,...

Tobacco chemical 'halts brain diseases' A tobacco chemical could provide new treatments for memory loss and brain diseases, according to new research. The substance, cotinine, is obtained when the body breaks down nicotine. But unlike nicotine, which has also been shown to protect brain cells, it is not addictive. Nor does it cause other side effects of nicotine, such as constricted blood vessels, stomach cramps and nausea. A team of US scientists led by Dr Jerry Buccafusco found that cotinine showed potential for the treatment of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's as well as symptoms of schizophrenia. Dr Buccafusco, who presented the...

The power of a laboratory in a handheld device - that is what the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) will add to its arsenal in two years. The state-of-the-art chip will help SAF troops detect deadly biological agents like anthrax and swiftly diagnose conditions like malaria while in the thick of action. Said Professor Thomas Gong, director of Attogenix Biosystems: "Using this biological lab-in-a-chip or biochip, a soldier will be able to test if his fever is due to the common cold or Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome)." The device can also test whether water from a stream is safe to...

In a world that is getting smaller and more crowded, where people -- and animals -- can travel around the globe in a matter of hours, experts say outbreaks of diseases like monkeypox, SARS and West Nile virus will continue to increase. "This is part of a new normal of emerging infectious diseases," said CDC Director Julie Gerberding. "This is a global community" and the recent outbreaks "illustrate the tendency for a problem in one corner of the world to emerge as a problem in another corner of the world." Monkeypox, which first appeared in the Western Hemisphere last month,...

Source: University Of California - Berkeley Date: 2003-06-13 SARS Death Rate Lower In Countries Responding Aggressively To Initial Outbreak Berkeley - Three months after SARS began its spread out of southern China, it is clear that a country's response to the epidemic can have a major impact on the percentage of infected people who die, according to epidemiologists at the University of California, Berkeley. An analysis accepted for August publication in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases indicates that countries that quickly initiated control measures against SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) saw a slower spread and a lower fatality rate. "The...

<p>WASHINGTON - Get used to SARS, West Nile, Hantavirus, Ebola, Nipah, Hendra, AIDS and other new nasty infectious diseases. Health experts say we're living in a new age of infections.</p> <p>And we have mostly ourselves to blame.</p> <p>The nation's top scientists say that environmental, economic, social and scientific changes have helped to trigger an unprecedented explosion of more than 35 new infectious diseases that have burst upon the world in the past 30 years. The U.S. death rate from infectious disease, which dropped in the first part of the 20th century and then stabilized, is now double what it was in 1980.</p>

A horrific venereal disease is preying on baboons in eastern Africa. An estimated 200 animals have been infected and scientists are scrambling to identify the mystery microbe that is attacking them.

We have just found a coronavirus in intestinal contents of a chicken by a PCR targeted to the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase gene (pol gene). Sequence analysis of this gene showed that, though it is grouped closely with bovine coronavirus and is distantly related to infectious bronchitis virus, it has low nucleotide identity to all known coronaviruses. The birds were 15 days old and had no clinical sign of any disease. These findings are quite similar to those associated with the coronavirus implicated in SARS.We are now trying to sequence other isolates.

Ex-President Bill Clinton may be the toast of Barcelona as he holds forth on ways to battle the global AIDS epidemic. But judging from the accounts of his former sex partners, safe sex was never his personal forte. In fact, every woman who's ever gone public with details of her encounter with the sex-obsessed ex-leader says he rejected the methods recommended by AIDS prevention advocates when it came to his own behavior. Gennifer Flowers has been famous since she came forward in late 1991 with her story of an 11-year affair with the former Arkansas governor. But the media never...

July 8, 2002LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA UNITED NATIONS SHOCK HORROR ON AIDS SELLING THE MOTHER OF ALL DISEASES By Anita Allen The biggest international health event last week was the release of the latest UNAIDS report on the global HIV epidemic. The organization’s CEO, Dr. Peter Piot, said the world was gripped by what was "undeniably the deadliest epidemic in history". (1) This may be a case of many a true pun said in jest, because what Piot is asking us to believe in is a 100% fatal germ that never runs out of new victims and causes a...

Honeybees in a Mite More Than TroubleParasites, an Exodus of Apiarists and Budget Cuts Imperil Vital Insect Excerpts: In recent years, two tiny spider-like parasites have been weakening and killing bee populations across the United States. While the mass media have played up the threat of Africanized "killer" bees in the Southwest, the rest of the country has been losing 80 percent or more of its wild honeybee populations. and ... Even commercial beekeepers, who take extraordinary measures to ward off pests and disease, are in trouble. During the winter of 2000-2001, Maryland was among East Coast states hit...

PARENTS BEWARE "SEXPERT" SICKOS REACHING YOUR CHILDREN VIA LOCAL PUBLIC SCHOOL SANCTIONED "YOUTH SUMMITS!" Here is yet another threat source of medically inaccurate, dishonest and negligent sex ed disinfo being given to school children in both high and middle school grades, courtesy of regional "youth summits." These events are local public school principal & school superintendent sanctioned, often without local Public School Board awareness, at which hundreds of public school children at a time, as young as 13 (7th grade) are shipped off during school hours to be subjected to "sexpert" speakers and workshops. Parents often recieve permission slips that...