Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced on Friday that she is allocating $1 billion in existing funds to purchase large quantities of vaccine against the novel H1N1 influenza strain, and to conduct clinical trials this summer  to determine if an adjuvant can be used. If this money ...

Episode 33 of the podcast "This Week in Virology" was recorded before an audience at the ASM General Meeting in Philadelphia. Vincent, Alan, Dick, and Raul Andino discussed increased arterial blood pressure caused by cytomegalovirus infection, restriction of influenza replication at low temperature by the avian viral glycoproteins, first isolation ...

The World Health Organization, whose duties include directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system, will soon be writing science textbooks. That statement isn't true, of course. But it was my reaction to reading the latest announcement from Geneva: Bowing to pressure, the World Health Organization announced Friday that it ...

Does previous exposure to influenza H1N1 viruses, either by infection or vaccination, provide any protection against infection with the new H1N1 influenza virus strains? The answer to this question might provide insight as to why over 60% of confirmed cases of influenza caused by the swine-like H1N1 viruses in the ...

Now that we have a rudimentary understanding of influenza virus replication, we can begin to consider how the virus causes disease - a field of study called viral pathogenesis. The first step in this process is virus entry into the body. The human body is covered with skin, which has ...