Biological Agents & Infectious Diseases
Move over Malaria: Mosquitoes Carrying Zika, Dengue May Thrive in Warmer Africa (
Reuters) From deadly droughts and destroyed crops to shrinking water sources, communities across sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to withstand the onslaught of global record-breaking temperatures. But the dangers do not end there. Rising heat poses another threat - one that is far less known and studied but could spark disease epidemics across the continent, scientists say. Mosquitoes are the menace, and the risk goes beyond malaria.
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Government Affairs & National Security
Global Health Security
Why Australia Wasn't Ready for a Dangerous Flu Season (
New York Times) Australia's carefree attitude toward preventive medicine may have met its match: the flu. The country is reeling from a potent flu season that has had a historically high number of cases in some states, and the resulting fatalities have raised growing alarms. Last week, an 8-year-old girl from Melbourne died from influenza complications - just weeks after a 30-year-old father passed away after getting the flu.
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Medicine & Public Health
New US Mosquito Maps Show Potential Hot Spots for Zika, Other Diseases (
CIDRAP) About three quarters of counties on the US mainland have suitable environments for harboring
Aedes aegypti and
Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, two species capable of spreading viruses that cause Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever infection, a team led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today.
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Why is the Flu Vaccine So Mediocre? (
Science) With flu season around the corner in the United States and Europe, the push has begun once again to encourage people to receive their annual shots. But over the past few years, it's become increasingly clear that the level of protection offered by the vaccine varies widely each flu season, from 10% to 60%. And new research has revealed surprising reasons for its lackluster performance.
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The Risk of Sustained Sexual Transmission of Zika Is Underestimated (
PLOS: Pathogens) The national and international community is grappling with how to respond to the ongoing Zika virus outbreak. One of the most uncertain aspects of this disease is its potential for sustained sexual transmission. Recent studies have suggested that there are large differences in the age- and sex-specific Zika virus attack rates--with women of childbearing age having the highest incidence of infection--and that the risk of sustained sexual transmission may be low.
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Science & Technology
DESMAN: A New Tool for De novo Extraction of Strains from Metagenomes (
Genome Biology) We introduce DESMAN for De novo Extraction of Strains from Metagenomes. Large multi-sample metagenomes are being generated but strain variation results in fragmentary co-assemblies. Current algorithms can bin contigs into metagenome-assembled genomes but are unable to resolve strain-level variation. DESMAN identifies variants in core genes and uses co-occurrence across samples to link variants into haplotypes and abundance profiles. These are then searched for against non-core genes to determine the accessory genome of each strain.
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Vaccine Development for Emerging Virulent Infectious Diseases (
Vaccine) The recent outbreak of Zaire Ebola virus in West Africa altered the classical paradigm of vaccine development. The rapid pace of spread of virus through the capital cities of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, with cases doubling almost weekly through the summer of 2014, and the potential for international dissemination, necessitated an alternative development schema. Through a massive collaborative effort between government, academia and the pharmaceutical industry, multiple vaccines and therapeutic candidates were rapidly advanced into clinical development - with two vaccines reaching advanced testing and a viral-vectored vesicular stomatitis vaccine demonstrating protection of at-risk individuals.
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New Antibody Attacks 99% of HIV Strains (
BBC) Scientists have engineered an antibody that attacks 99% of HIV strains and can prevent infection in primates. It is built to attack three critical parts of the virus - making it harder for HIV to resist its effects. The work is a collaboration between the US National Institutes of Health and the pharmaceutical company Sanofi.
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Five Ways to Get CRISPR into the Body (
MIT Technology Review) The gene-editing technology CRISPR has the potential to treat--and possibly cure--any number of diseases. But in order for the DNA editing to happen inside you, CRISPR needs to find its way to the right part of the body. That mostly means getting a DNA-cutting protein called Cas9, normally found in bacteria, to work in your cells. To do that, researchers are trying out some surprising delivery techniques.
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Global Reaction to the Recent Outbreaks of Zika Virus: Insights from a Big Data Analysis (
PLOS: One) The recent spreading of Zika virus represents an emerging global health threat. As such, it is attracting public interest worldwide, generating a great amount of related Internet searches and social media interactions. The aim of this research was to understand Zika-related digital behavior throughout the epidemic spreading and to assess its consistence with real-world epidemiological data, using a behavioral informatics and analytics approach.
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Stability and Pre-formulation Development of a Plant-produced Anthrax Vaccine Candidate (
Vaccine) The majority of second generation anthrax vaccines, for active immunization against
Bacillus anthracis, use the immunogen protective antigen. Vaccinations with native or recombinant PA generate high toxin neutralization titers and offer protective immunity. In pre-clinical efficacy studies rPA has been used with various adjuvants, but mostly with aluminium salts. The Alhydrogel rPA formulation is the only FDA-approved anthrax vaccine (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed [AVA]). AVA is produced from filtrates of a
B. anthracis culture and consists of PA as the primary immunogen.
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A Novel Strategy to Express Different Antigens from One Modified Vaccinia Ankara Vaccine Vector (
bioRxiv) To enhance global control of encephalitis and hepatitis caused by rabies, Japanese encephalitis, hepatitis B-virus, and enterovirus 71 novel immunisation strategies are needed. Therefore, a multipathogen modified Vaccinia Ankara vector, expressing antigens from the above pathogens, was constructed. Two recombinants, one carrying the EV71 and JEV pathogen sequence and one the RABV-HBV pathogen sequence were generated. To ensure similar expression of the antigens, a T7-promoter was linked to the expression cassettes of all pathogen sequences.
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Other 21st Century Threats
What Happens if North Korea Tests a Hydrogen Bomb over the Pacific? (
CNN) North Korea just intimated that it may test a nuclear weapon somewhere above the Pacific Ocean. If Pyongyang follows through on the threat, it would be the first nuclear weapon detonated in the atmosphere in decades. The threat risks escalating an already volatile situation, and comes after US President Donald Trump threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea in a speech to the United Nations.
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