An outbreak of hand, foot, and mouth disease in China has lead to 41,000 infections and 18 deaths this year. What is this disease and what causes it? Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is a rather common viral infection of children. There were 80,000 recorded cases of the disease just in China for 2007. …
I joined host Dr. Marc Pelletier on the TWiT podcast ‘Futures in Biotech’ to interview influenza virologist Dr. Peter Palese, professor and chair of microbiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. We talk about influenza and why Dr. Palese revived a virus that killed 50 million people. Download Futures in Biotech 40: Virus Reborn …
When live, attenuated poliovirus vaccine was used in the US, its production and testing was regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Guidelines for preparing and testing the vaccine can be found in the Code of Federal Regulations – the codification of the rules published in the Federal Register by the executive departments and agencies …
There is an article on Dengue in the NY Times this week. It’s short on science, but brings home the impact of the disease (which is rare in the US and Europe) in developing countries. The article focuses on the disease in Bangkok, where the United States Army maintains its largest overseas research laboratory. The …
Since Monday I have been in Sitges, Spain for Europic 2008. This is a scientific meeting on picornaviruses held every other year in a European country. The picornaviruses are a family of non-enveloped, positive-strand RNA viruses, and includes poliovirus, rhinovirus, and foot-and-mouth disease virus. I have been attending Europic meetings since 1983, when it was …
There is an ongoing outbreak of enterovirus 71 (EV71) in a broad region of Asia, including China, Vietnam, Mongolia, Taiwan, and Singapore. There have been 3606 cases in China, including 36 deaths. Infection with EV71 is common in Asia, where it causes hand-foot-and-mouth disease in children, a febrile syndrome accompanied by flat or raised red …
