Infectious Disease

In five years the NHS will require another reform, caution the editors of three leading healthcare publications. In addition, they request a public debate regarding the NHS's future to "salvage some good" from the government's "damaging" reforms. According to a second BMJ report discarding the Health and Social Care Bill, now would save more than £1 billion in 2013...

A new study recently published in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management (JIPM) shows that from 2003 to 2008, the use of insecticide active ingredients was reduced by about 90% in University of Florida housing buildings after an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program was implemented...

(MedPage Today) -- A look at why some stockbrokers are successful, a study that brings oncologists' worst nightmare to life, and a timely Eureka moment in the war against parasites highlight this week's collection of Lab Notes.

(MedPage Today) -- With three exceptions, coverage with adult vaccines remained steady -– and low -- in 2010, the CDC reported.

(MedPage Today) -- Small turtles are once again the source of a Salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than a hundred people in the U.S., most of them youngsters, government researchers said.

A new analysis of malaria mortality published in The Lancet this week suggests deaths to the parasitic disease worldwide have been grossly underestimated, especially in adults. If confirmed, the study has huge implications for how large amounts of charity money are spent in controlling the disease...

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), argue that added sweeteners pose dangers to public health, and the government should regulate sugar in the same way as it regulates alcohol and tobacco. They set out their reasons for viewing sugar as "toxic" in a comment article published in Nature this week. First author Robert H...

A team of German researchers, with the help of a lecturer at the University of Alcala (UAH, Spain), has developed a system that locates pedestrians in front of the vehicle using artificial vision. Soon to be integrated into the top-of-the-range Mercedes vehicles, the device includes two cameras and a unit that process information supplied in real time by all image points...

Can mentoring relationships help female students who survive childhood abuse or domestic violence? Absolutely, according to new research from Concordia University, published in the Journal of College Student Development...

Researchers have found a new biomarker for cyanide poisoning, which may extend its detection window in death investigations by weeks if not months. Unless cyanide is discovered at the time of death on the mouth or nose, elevated cyanide concentrations can only be found for up to two days under current toxicological testing...

The value of routine body mass index (BMI) screening in schools has been a topic of ongoing controversy. An expert Roundtable Discussion in the current issue of Childhood Obesity, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc...

Attending a financially poor school may have more of an effect on unhealthy adolescent weight than family poverty, according to Penn State sociologists. Poor schools even influence how parental education protects kids from becoming overweight...

Meticulous forward planning, effective casualty assessment by a senior surgeon and efficient teamwork by medical and administrative staff are essential when handling injuries sustained in major terrorist incidents...

Background: Cytoadherence of infected red blood cells to brain endothelium is causally implicated in malarial coma, one of the severe manifestations of falciparum malaria. Cytoadherence is mediated by specific binding of variant parasite antigens, expressed on the surface of infected erythrocytes, to endothelial receptors including, ICAM-1, VCAM and CD36. In fatal cases of severe falciparum malaria with coma, blood vessels in the brain are characteristically congested with infected erythrocytes. Brain sections from a fatal case of knowlesi malaria, but without coma, were similarly congested with infected erythrocytes. The objective of this study was to determine the binding phenotype of Plasmodium knowlesi infected human erythrocytes to recombinant human ICAM-1, VCAM and CD36. Methods: Five patients with PCR-confirmed P. knowlesi malaria were recruited into the study with consent between April and August 2010. Pre-treatment venous blood was washed and cultured ex vivo to increase the proportion of schizont-infected erythrocytes. Cultured blood was seeded into Petri dishes with triplicate areas coated with ICAM-1, VCAM and CD36. Following incubation at 37degreesC for one hour the dishes were washed and the number of infected erythrocytes bound/mm2 to PBS control areas and to recombinant human ICAM-1 VCAM and CD36 coated areas were recorded. Each assay was performed in duplicate. Assay performance was monitored with the Plasmodium falciparum clone HB3. Results: Blood samples were cultured ex vivo for up to 14.5 h (mean 11.3 +/- 1.9 h) to increase the relative proportion of mature trophozoite and schizont-infected red blood cells to at least 50% (mean 65.8 +/- 17.51%). Three (60%) isolates bound significantly to ICAM-1 and VCAM, one (20%) isolate bound to VCAM and none of the five bound significantly to CD36. Conclusions: Plasmodium knowlesi infected erythrocytes from human subjects bind in a specific but variable manner to the inducible endothelial receptors ICAM-1 and VCAM. Binding to the constitutively-expressed endothelial receptor CD36 was not detected. Further work will be required to define the pathological consequences of these interactions.

WASHINGTON (MedPage Today) -- The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, facing a hail of criticism for cutting off funding of breast exams at Planned Parenthood, has denied that abortion played a role in its decision.

(MedPage Today) -- The goal of the American Heart Association's "Million Hearts" initiative is to reduce the rate of heart attacks and strokes by one million events over the next five years.

Sugar should be controlled like alcohol and tobacco to protect public health, according to a team of UCSF researchers, who maintain in a new report that sugar is fueling a global obesity pandemic, contributing to 35 million deaths annually worldwide from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer...

Norovirus, a pathogen that often causes food poisoning and gastroenteritis, was responsible for 18.2 percent of all infection outbreaks and 65 percent of ward closures in U.S...

In an effort to reduce the inappropriate use of medical imaging and improve quality of care, a large, tertiary-care hospital has successfully implemented a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system with clinical decision support for radiology, according to a study in the February issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology...

Results revealed that people who live in socially disadvantaged areas were 42 per cent more at risk of getting arthritis than people in more affluent areas. The study revealed more than 30 per cent of people living in socially disadvantaged areas reported having arthritis, as opposed to 18.5 per cent in the more affluent areas...