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Scientists are scrambling to make sense of a sharp increase in reported infections with the deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) virus. In April alone, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have reported over 200 new cases—more than all MERS-affected countries combined in the preceding 2 years. That has sparked fresh fears that the virus may be about to go on a global rampage. The World Health Organization expressed alarm at the new numbers, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published an updated risk assessment on 25 April warning European countries to expect more imported...

WASHINGTON (CBS / AP) — Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer asked the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday to initiate a formal investigation into what has caused polio-like paralysis in about 20 children in California over the past 18 months. Boxer said “we need answers” in her letter to CDC Director Thomas Frieden. In particular, she wants the agency to look into whether the illness can be traced to a virus or environmental factors. She also wants to know whether the agency is aware of similar reports of paralysis nationwide...

Over a one-year period, five children in California developed a polio-like illness that caused severe weakness or paralysis in their arms and legs, a new case study reports. In two of the children, their symptoms have now been linked with an extremely rare virus called enterovirus-68. Like the poliovirus, which has been eradicated in the U.S. since 1979 thanks to the polio vaccine, strains of enterovirus in rare cases can invade and injure the spine. These are the first reported cases of polio-like symptoms being caused by enterovirus in the United States. During the last decade, outbreaks of polio-like symptoms...

Forty years ago, a beloved neighbor was bedridden for weeks at a time with a mysterious ailment. She knew only that it involved her liver and that she must never drink alcohol, which would make things worse. It was decades before the cause of these debilitating flare-ups was discovered: a viral infection at first called non-A, non-B hepatitis, then properly identified in 1989 as hepatitis C... --snip-- But with two newly approved drugs and a few more in the pipeline, a new era in treatment of hepatitis C is at hand. These regimens are more effective at curing patients and...

A study has found that the antifungal drug Ciclopirox kills HIV in cell cultures -- and the virus doesn't bounce back when the drug is stopped. But the research has yet to be performed on people. A drug commonly prescribed to treat nail fungus appears to come with a not-so-tiny side effect: killing HIV in cell cultures.In a study performed at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, not only does the drug Ciclopirox rid infectious HIV from cell cultures, but the virus also doesn't bounce back when the drug is withheld. The same group of researchers had previously shown that Ciclopirox...

Pinning down an effective way to combat the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, the viral precursor to AIDS, has long been a challenge for scientists and physicians, because the virus is an elusive one that mutates frequently and, as a result, quickly becomes immune to medication. A team of Drexel University researchers is trying to get one step ahead of the virus with a microbicide they've created that can trick HIV into "popping" itself into oblivion. Previous image Enlarge Close Next image / Like Us on Facebook Its name is DAVEI - which stands for "Dual Action Virolytic Entry...

Late summer is peak Lyme disease season. As a result, Sen. Charles Schumer has urged the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study new and potentially fatal tick-borne illnesses.The New York Democrat has urged the CDC to look into two diseases that have already been found in the state.Schumer noted that New York City and on Long Island lead the state in Lyme disease infections. play Schumer Calls For More Research Into Tick-Borne DiseasesWCBS 880's Monica Miller Reports In addition to Lyme disease, ticks are known to carry Babesiosis, Powassan virus and Borrelia miyamotoi.Schumer said those diseases are...

Ever since people in the Middle East started dying of a mysterious new infection last year, scientists have been trying to pinpoint the source of the outbreak. Now they may finally have found a clue in an unlikely population: retired racing camels.

DENVER — A Colorado man who died of West Nile virus last year was likely infected through a blood transfusion, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. The man, who was undergoing treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, began developing West Nile symptoms after 29 days in the hospital, sharply narrowing the number of ways he could have been exposed to the virus, according to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. He died after 47 days in the hospital. Eighteen days prior to showing symptoms, the patient received a blood transfusion that health officials now believe contained...

Herpes simplex virus 1 has an internal pressure eight times higher than a car tire, and uses it to literally blast its DNA into human cells, according to a new study published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.Dr Alex Evilevitch and his colleagues provide the first experimental evidence of a high internal pressure of tens of atmospheres within Herpes simplex virus 1, resulting from the confined genome. NPC – nuclear pore complex (Bauer DW et al) The study provides the first experimental evidence of high internal pressure within a virus that infects humans – a phenomenon previously...

Enlarge Image Air travel. Ferret studies show that H7N9 can move via respiratory droplets from intentionally infected animals in one cage to their neighbors. Credit: Sander Herfst Since a new bird flu virus began sickening and killing people in China in March, one of the most pressing questions has been whether the virus, H7N9, would easily spread from human to human, possibly kicking off a global pandemic. Fortunately, no convincing signs of such transmission surfaced, and the outbreak—which led affected Chinese cities to close poultry markets and cull birds—seems to have ground to a halt. But three new studies...

Genome of largest viruses yet discovered hints at 'fourth domain' of life. The organism was initially called NLF, for “new life form”. Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, evolutionary biologists at Aix-Marseille University in France, found it in a water sample collected off the coast of Chile, where it seemed to be infecting and killing amoebae. Under a microscope, it appeared as a large, dark spot, about the size of a small bacterial cell. Later, after the researchers discovered a similar organism in a pond in Australia, they realized that both are viruses — the largest yet found. Each is around...

As moratorium lifts, oversight is put in place to assess studies on eradicated cattle virus. Research is set to resume on the rinderpest virus, the cause of a deadly cattle disease that was declared eradicated in 2011 and has been off limits for study ever since. The moratorium — part of efforts to guard against accidental or intentional release of virus that could reintroduce the disease — was lifted on 10 July and replaced by a new international oversight system for such research. In its heyday, the disease — the only one other than smallpox to be eradicated from nature...

Enlarge Image Crowd control? Public health experts worry that the annual hajj could increase the incidence of MERS. Credit: Bluemangoa2z/Wikimedia Commons The World Health Organization (WHO) is convening an emergency committee to determine whether the novel coronavirus that emerged in the Middle East last year constitutes a "public health emergency of international concern." Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment at the WHO, announced the move at a press conference today in Geneva. Fukuda said the committee would be drawn from a roster established under International Health Regulations and include experts in public health, epidemiology, virology and...

A mysterious group of viruses known for their circular genome has been detected in patients with severe disease on two continents. In papers published independently this week, researchers report the discovery of agents called cycloviruses in Vietnam and in Malawi. The studies suggest that the viruses—one of which also widely circulates in animals in Vietnam—could be involved in brain inflammation and paraplegia, but further studies are needed to confirm a causative link. The discovery in Vietnam grew out of a frustrating lack of information about the causes of some central nervous system (CNS) infections such as encephalitis and meningitis, which...

Self-assembling nanoparticles could make updating seasonal vaccines easier. Under the microscope, they look like simple jacks, with eight spikes jutting out of a central ball. But these protein nanoparticles are science's latest weapon against influenza: a new breed of flu vaccine that provides better and broader protection than commercially available ones — at least in animal tests. Current flu vaccines use inactivated whole viruses and must be regularly remade to target the strains most likely to cause illness in the coming year. But the new nanoparticles would require fewer updates because they induce the production of antibodies that neutralize a...

Enlarge Image It shall be called. Researchers are proposing a name for new coronavirus (yellow): Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Credit: NIAID/RML A group of coronavirus experts has published its proposal to name a new, deadly virus after the Middle East, the region where it originates. In a short paper published online today by the Journal of Virology, the Coronavirus Study Group (CSG), along with several other scientists, recommends calling the pathogen Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-Cov). As ScienceInsider reported last week, the group, part of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, hopes to end confusion...

A new bird flu strain that has killed 22 people in China is "one of the most lethal" of its kind and transmits more easily to humans than another strain that has killed hundreds since 2003, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert said on Wednesday. The H7N9 flu has infected 108 people in China since it was first detected in March, according to the Geneva-based WHO. Although it is not clear exactly how people are being infected, experts say they see no evidence so far of the most worrisome scenario - sustained transmission between people. An international team of scientists...

Study could aid development of more effective vaccines. For the first time, scientists have tracked in a patient the evolution of a potent immune molecule that recognizes many different HIV viruses. By revealing how these molecules — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — develop, the research could inform efforts to make vaccines that elicit similar antibodies that can protect people from becoming infected with HIV. The researchers, led by Barton Haynes of Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, found that broadly neutralizing antibodies developed only after the population of viruses in the patient had diversified — something that...

Northwestern Medicine scientists have identified a component of the herpesvirus that "hijacks" machinery inside human cells, allowing the virus to rapidly and successfully invade the nervous system upon initial exposure. Led by Gregory Smith, associate professor in immunology and microbiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, researchers found that viral protein 1-2, or VP1/2, allows the herpesvirus to interact with cellular motors, known as dynein. Once the protein has overtaken this motor, the virus can speed along intercellular highways, or microtubules, to move unobstructed from the tips of nerves in skin to the nuclei of neurons within the nervous...