Poliovirus has been isolated from a patient who died last month in Minnesota. Is this incident related to the outbreak of polio in an Amish community in the same state four years ago? Here are the facts about this case that have been released by the Minnesota Department of Health: the patient, an adult, had …
Last week the US Food and Drug Administration approved a rapid test for determining whether a person is infected with an H5N1 subtype of influenza virus. Why is it better than previously available influenza diagnostic assays? The format of the new assay, according to its developer, ArborVita, “is the familiar lateral-flow rapid antigen assay”. This …
The many human viral diseases that have crossed from other animal species – such as AIDS, Ebola, SARS, encephalitis and respiratory diesease caused by henipaviruses – demonstrate the pathogenic potential of the zoonotic pool. Are there also reverse zoonoses – diseases of humans that are transferred to other animal species? An example of a reverse …
Reverse zoonoses: Human viruses that infect other animals Read More »
None of the four human polymaviruses that were known in early 2008 – JC, BK, KI and WU – had been shown to cause cancer. The subsequent identification of a new polyomavirus associated with Merkel cell carcinoma demonstrates the type of evidence that is required to prove that a virus is oncogenic in humans. Merkel …
Merkel cell polyomavirus, a new oncogenic human virus? Read More »
On episode #27 of the podcast “This Week in Virology”, Vincent, Dick, Alan, and Saul Silverstein revisit an ebolavirus needlestick accident, and discuss the role of TLR3 in formation of Negri bodies, a New England college closed by norovirus gastroenteritis, hand, foot, and mouth disease outbreak in China, and the exit of herpes simplex virus …
Many of us have experienced herpesvirus reactivation from latency. Suddenly a sore erupts on the lip, festers for a week, then subsides. Years later, for no apparent reason, it happens again. Did you ever wonder what causes these recurrent blisters? Herpes simplex viruses are associated with latent infections, a type of persistent viral infection that …
