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The Antibiotic VitaminDeficiency in vitamin D may predispose people to infection Janet Raloff In April 2005, a virulent strain of influenza hit a maximum-security forensic psychiatric hospital for men that's midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. John J. Cannell, a psychiatrist there, observed with increasing curiosity as one infected ward after another was quarantined to limit the outbreak. Although 10 percent of the facility's 1,200 patients ultimately developed the flu's fever and debilitating muscle aches, none did in the ward that he supervised. WINTER WOES. Cold-weather wear and the sun's angle in the winter sky limit how much ultraviolet...

Statins defend against fungus-caused sepsis Nathan Seppa From San Francisco, at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy When a blood infection causes an inflammatory reaction that attacks the entire circulatory system, the result is a condition called sepsis that's fatal about 40 percent of the time. A new study suggests that sepsis brought on by a fungal infection is less lethal in people taking cholesterol-lowering pills called statins than in those not getting the drugs. Physician Graeme Forrest of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore says that he noticed reports suggesting that statins improve the survival...

· Technique renders pathogens benign· Crop and animal diseases could also be targeted Scientists have taken a big step towards a new generation of antibiotics by designing compounds that stop bacteria "talking to each other", thwarting their ability to spread infection. The revolutionary approach renders bacteria benign rather than killing them off, and comes as many antibiotics are losing their potency against pathogens which have developed drug resistance.Tests showed the compounds actively blocked the spread of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common bacterium which causes fatal lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis and leads to life-threatening blood infections in patients with...

Health experts are to hold an emergency meeting in Johannesburg this week, following the discovery of a deadly new strain of tuberculosis. The strain - known as extreme drug-resistant TB - has horrified World Health Organisation doctors. In one outbreak in South Africa, 52 of 53 patients died within weeks of becoming infected. 'This new strain leaves us facing a nightmare,' said Paul Nunn, coordinator of the WHO's drug-resistance unit. 'It is resistant to nearly every drug in our arsenal. We are now on the threshold of the appearance of a strain of TB that is resistant to every medicine...

EVANSTON, Ill. -- A recent Northwestern University study found that a new treatment using stem cells might extend the lives of patients with lupus. Stem cell treatments could help patients with severe cases who have not responded to other options, according to a study published in the Feb. 1 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. Lupus is a disease that causes patients' immune systems to become unable to distinguish between foreign substances and normal parts of the body. This causes the immune system to attack the patient's own cells and tissues instead of protecting them. Researchers, including...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A person who has reason to believe he or she has HIV may be sued by sexual partners if they become infected, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday, broadening the state's view of when liability arises from the disease. Knowingly passing along HIV, which leads to AIDS, is already illegal in California and people who do so may be sued for damages in state court. The California Supreme Court's decision widens the scope for law suits against sexual partners over negligent transmission. In their decision, a majority of the court's justices held that they "cannot...

A superbug that first targeted vulnerable carriers such as prison inmates and intravenous drug users is now sweeping across Canada, sickening healthy adults and children in a number of Canadian provinces. Researchers at the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported the development Tuesday in a number of articles that were rushed to print in order to raise awareness. Forms of the drug-resistant bug known as community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- or CA-MRSA -- are causing skin and soft-tissue infections which are often difficult to treat, along with weeping wounds that don't heal. "People have flu-like symptoms, but often it won't present...

Don't worry, the doctor told Brian Lykins' parents, as he prepared to use cartilage from a cadaver to fix their son's knee. A million people a year have operations that use tissue from donated dead bodies. The nation's largest tissue bank had supplied this cartilage. It was disinfected and perfectly safe, he assured them. But it wasn't. Four days after this routine, elective surgery, Lykins — a healthy, 23-year-old student from Minnesota — died of a raging infection. He died because the cartilage came from a corpse that had sat unrefrigerated for 19 hours — a corpse that had been...

Julie and Chris LeMoult were excited parents-to-be. Did a hospital infection turn the happiest day of their lives into a nightmare?

If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what's next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that's surfaced in South Texas. Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible. "These people will have like beads of sweat but it's black, black and tarry," said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients. Patients get lesions that never heal. "Sometimes little black specks that...

The senior intelligence analyst who was fired Thursday by the CIA is a supporter of Democratic congressional candidate Joseph Sestak, which U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon’s campaign charged is further evidence that the former Navy admiral cannot be trusted on national security issues. Mary McCarthy was dismissed for leaking classified information about the CIA’s secret overseas prisons to The Washington Post, several media organizations reported Saturday. Sestak, who served as director for defense policy on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, received two donations from McCarthy last month totaling $350. McCarthy also contributed $2,000 to Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Weldon’s...

The doctors discovered that Candace has "gram positive cocci infection" originating on the bone and spread throughout the soft tissue in her body. although the Surgery went well, her right thigh has increased with Infection. Candace has had a feeding tube inserted today to nourish her very weak body. Today they will be undergoing an emergency procedure called "hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy" she will be put in a oxygen chamber in Shands hospital donated by Nasa in order to kill the anaerobic Infection. Please pray for the success of this

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — The federal government has called an unusual scientific conference to look into two related bacterial infections, one that killed four California women who took an abortion pill and the other that has caused outbreaks of diarrhea and colitis in hospitals and nursing homes across the nation. Fifteen to 20 scientists who have studied the two bacteria have been asked to present their research at the conference, scheduled for May 11, an official at the Food and Drug Administration said Friday. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the abortion pill, Mifeprex or RU-486, is...

TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey is among the states seeing an increase in deaths from an intestinal bacterial infection that most often strikes older hospital patients who have taken antibiotics. National occurrences are up as well because, officials say, an overuse of antibiotics for other ailments is killing off the "good" bacteria that used to control the growth of Clostridium difficile bacterium. In the Garden State, the number of deaths attributed to the infection has doubled since 1997. State hospital discharge data reviewed by The Record of Bergen County found the infection has sickened 10,000 New Jerseyans a year, killing...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A Sanford mother says she will never be able to hold her newborn because an Orlando hospital performed a life-altering surgery and, she claims, the hospital refuses to explain why they left her as a multiple amputee. The woman filed a complaint against Orlando Regional Healthcare Systems, she said, because they won't tell her exactly what happened. The hospital maintains the woman wants to know information that would violate other patients' rights. Claudia Mejia gave birth eight and a half months ago at Orlando Regional South Seminole. She was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando...

Source: Yale University Date: 2006-01-11 URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060110231737.htm Yale Study Explains Complex Infection Fighting Mechanism Yale School of Medicine researchers report in Nature Immunology how infection fighting mechanisms in the body can distinguish between a virus and the healthy body, shedding new light on auto immune disorders. The infection fighters in question, toll-like receptors (TLRs), function by recognizing viral, bacterial or fungal pathogens and then sending signals throughout the immune system announcing that an infection has occurred. Viruses change features to avoid being recognized, thereby triggering the immune response. But TLRs recognize the highly conserved features of pathogens, features that...

Last month brought fresh evidence that while small, bacteria can certainly look out for themselves. Clostridium difficile, a microbe that can cause serious digestive illness and death in vulnerable patients in hospitals and nursing homes but rarely bothers healthy adults outside healthcare settings, was blamed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for doing just that in four states. Like many other germs, it apparently had mutated, under pressure from antibiotics, into a toxic new strain. ~snip~ Military service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan increasingly are coming home with Acinetobacter baumannii, a potent microbe that causes pneumonia...

Baby Susan Torres Dies From Infection After Miraculous Birth Arlington, VA (LifeNews.com) -- Little baby Susan Torres died last night after battling a severe infection. She became the subject of international attention after her father decided to allow her mother to remain alive to give birth following a tragic car accident rather than letting both mother and baby die. In an email provided to LifeNews.com, Justin Torres, baby Susan's uncle, said she passed away following an infection. An emergency surgery was unsuccessful. "I am saddened to have to report that, following emergency surgery that we had hoped would correct a...

Two children died Friday after being infected with a parasite associated with swimming in stagnant water, health officials said. The children, aged 9 and 7, died after being infected with Naegleria, an amoeba that lives in warm water and can cause a deadly inflammation of the brain, the Tulsa Health Department said. The boys, who live in the Tulsa area, came to doctors with symptoms of fever, hallucinations and headaches, health department spokesman Melanie Christian said. The boys did not know each other and appear to have contracted the disease independently. The 9-year-old died Friday morning. The 7-year-old succumbed about...

Forbes.com http://www.forbes.com/ The Iraq Infection Matthew Herper, 08.02.05 NEW YORK - ; doctors are fighting to contain an outbreak of a potentially deadly drug-resistant bacteria that apparently originated in the Iraqi soil. So far at least 280 people, mostly soldiers returning from the battlefield, have been infected, a number of whom contracted the illness while in U.S. military hospitals. Most of the victims are relatively young troops who were injured by the land mines, mortars and suicide bombs that have permeated the Iraq conflict. No active-duty soldiers have died from the infections, but five extremely sick patients who were in...