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 ...

Nearly one-third of the budget for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an institute of the National Institutes of Health, goes towards research on bioterrorism. The concern is that pathogenic viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms might be used in terrorist attacks, and therefore research is required to produce ...

I have migrated this blog to WordPress, mainly to enable comments. I encourage you to write questions, opinions, or thoughts about virology using the simple posting functions. I hope to further expand the virology information in this site with podcasts and videocasts.

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 ...

Here is another question from one of the students in my recent vaccine lecture at Columbia University: "I wanted to ask you a quick question about the Pox Virus. In class, you explained how the live vaccine can lead to the spread of the virus through the urine/feces of vaccinated ...