Biological Agents & Infectious Diseases
Iran, Vietnam Report More H5N1 Outbreaks (
CIDRAP) The highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus struck birds in Iran and Vietnam, as H5N8 outbreaks continue in Europe, including at a large poultry farm in Sweden, according to the latest notifications from the World Organization for Animal Health.
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Ongoing Measles Outbreak in Wallonia, Belgium, December 2016 to March 2017: Characteristics and Challenges (
Eurosurveillance) Following the detection of a cluster of three measles cases in December 2016, since mid-January 2017, an increasing number of measles cases have been notified in Wallonia, Belgium. Between 20 December 2016 and 16 April 2017, 288 measles cases were reported to the Wallonian regional health authorities, compared with 19, 34, 10 and 14 cases in total for 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013, respectively.
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Domestic Preparedness & Response
Government Affairs & National Security
Neglecting the State Department Does Real Damage (
Economist) FEW Americans would have known it, but on New Year's Eve their diplomats probably prevented scores of killings in central Africa, and perhaps a war. President Joseph Kabila, Congo's long-stay autocrat, had refused to leave power, as he was obliged to do. Angry protesters were taking to the streets of Kinshasa and Mr. Kabila's troops buckling up to see them there. Yet through a combination of adroit negotiating and the high-minded pushiness that comes with representing a values-based superpower, Tom Perriello, the State Department's then special envoy for the Great Lakes, and John Kerry, the then secretary of state, helped persuade Mr. Kabila to back down.
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Vaccines on Trial: US Court Separates Fact from Fiction (
Science) Leah Durant was cleaning the unfinished basement of her home in Falls Church, Virginia, one day in October 2010 when she scraped her hand on a rusty nail. Not long after, the then-37-year-old lawyer was seated in her doctor's office, preparing to receive a tetanus vaccine--a preventive measure that since 1947 has reduced US fatalities caused by the soil-borne bacterium
Clostridium tetani 500-fold.
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Global Health Security
Medicine & Public Health
The Riskiest Vaccine? The One That Is Not Given (
H5N1) Last week, public health authorities in Minnesota asked more than 200 people to quarantine themselves after 12 cases of measles were diagnosed in less than 2 weeks--all of them in unvaccinated children younger than 6 years. Across the ocean, an unvaccinated 17-year-old Portuguese girl died of measles after the virus invaded her lungs, in the midst of an outbreak there that mirrors surges in cases in Germany, Italy, and Romania.
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Q&A: First US State-by-State Analysis of Hepatitis C Cases (
Science) In the infectious disease world, the liver-damaging hepatitis C virus long has lived in the shadows of killers such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. But curative--and expensive--HCV drugs that have come to market over the past 5 years have focused new attention on the deadly disease.
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Study Details Optimal Combo Therapy for Drug-resistant Bacteremia (
CIDRAP) Initiating antibiotic treatment quickly, with the right drug, can reduce mortality in patients with drug-resistant bloodstream infections, but combination antibiotic therapy may be necessary only for the most severely ill patients, according to a new study published in
The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
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Addressing a Yellow Fever Vaccine Shortage--United States, 2016-2017 (
MMWR) Recent manufacturing problems resulted in a shortage of the only US-licensed yellow fever vaccine. This shortage is expected to lead to a complete depletion of yellow fever vaccine available for the immunization of US travelers by mid-2017. CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, and Sanofi Pasteur are collaborating to ensure a continuous yellow fever vaccine supply in the US.
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Science & Technology
SIGA Technologies Completes Enrollment of Phase 1 Clinical Study for New Smallpox Treatment
(
Homeland Preparedness News) SIGA Technologies, Inc. recently completed its enrollment and dosing of healthy individuals in a Phase 1 clinical study of TPOXX, an intravenous formulation intended for the treatment of smallpox and related orthopoxvirus infections.
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Unexpected Relations of Historical Anthrax Strain (
mBio) In 1998, it was claimed that an 80-year-old glass tube intentionally filled with
Bacillus anthracis and embedded in a sugar lump as a WWI biological weapon still contained viable spores. Today, genome sequencing of three colonies isolated in 1998 and subjected to phylogenetic analysis surprisingly identified a well-known
B. anthracis reference strain isolated in the US in 1981, pointing to accidental laboratory contamination.
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Scientists Can Now Pull the DNA of Ancient Humans out of Cave Dirt (
The Atlantic) Around 45,000 years ago, in a Belgian cave, a Neanderthal died. As its body decayed, its cells split apart, spilling their contents onto the cave floor. Those remnants included the Neanderthal's DNA, some of which stuck to minerals in the sediment. There, leashed to the very rock, the DNA persisted, long after its owner's body had disappeared and its bones had been carted off by scavengers. And in 2015, a group of scientists scooped it up.
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