An outbreak of ten cases of poliomyelitis caused by circulating vaccine-derivied poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) is ongoing in Pakistan, centered in the Kila Abdulla/Pishin area of Baluchistan. The same virus strain has spread to the neighboring Kandahar province in Afghanistan, where two paralytic cases have been reported. Vaccine-derived poliomyelitis is a well-known consequence of immunization …
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released its latest estimates on the number of new HIV infections in the United States: HIV remains a serious health problem, with an estimated 47,500 people becoming newly infected with the virus in the United States in 2010. Youth make up 7% of the more than 1 million …
Informative and sobering blog post from Sally Rockey, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, on 2011 grant application success rates. It’s all summarized in this graph, taken from the NIH Data Book: The success rate, which is the number of funded grants divided by the number of applications, has dropped from a high point of …
Head of the US National Institutes of Health Francis Collins was asked some tough questions by a House of Representatives subcommittee examining the new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, NCATS. The goal of the new center, opened in 2012, is to reduce the amount of time needed to develop new drugs, diagnostic tests, and …
NIH head defends new center for translational science Read More »
For week 48 in the United States (25 November – 1 December), influenza activity increased. Of 5,511 specimens submitted, 1,139 (20.7%) were positive for influenza. Of these, 854 (75%) were influenza A and 285 (25%) were influenza B. Of the influenza A virus positive specimens, 4 were H1N1 (2009) and 406 contained the H3 HA. The …
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report summarizes a mumps outbreak that occurred in 2011 on a university campus in California: On September 29, 2011, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) three cases of mumps among students recently evaluated at their university’s student health services with symptoms suggestive of mumps. …
