) Wakefield's work posited a now-discredited link between autism and the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine;
Coming up 12 january The british Medical Journal and Britain's Committee on Publication Ethics host a London meeting on how best to manage research misconduct in the United kingdom. 13 january India may have gone a year without reporting a case of polio a milestone
which are used in humans to treat a range of infections, including pneumonia. On 4 Â January, the agency said that it would prohibit certain uses of cephalosporins in farm animals including cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys,
because overuse of the drugs is"likely to contribute to cephalosporin-resistant strains of certain bacterial pathogens.
If cephalosporins become ineffective in treating human diseases, the FDA said, "doctors may have to use drugs that are not as effective,
"If we want to protect large animals from these infections, then we have to test vaccines in them,
and reviewers considering fears about whether it could keep pathogens safely contained in the middle of prime US cattle country.
Beef producers have been alarmed particularly that the 2010 assessment put the cumulative risk of foot-and-mouth disease escaping from the NBAF over the facility s projected 50-year lifespan at 70%(see Fear factor.
The site is adjacent to the KSU Biosecurity Research Institute, a BSL-3 facility that studies animal and plant pathogens.
The DHS says that the NBAF is needed to develop countermeasures against bioterrorism a threat that resonates less now than it did immediately after the anthrax attacks on the United states in 2001.
"We have the capabilities to build a facility that will better prepare us in the event of some pathogen coming in.
See page 289 for more on the flu-virus debate. go. nature. com/pf7bwv20-24 february Marine scientists'responses to the Gulf of mexico oil spill in 2010 are discussed among topics at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt lake city, Utah
Flu surveillance lackingin addition, the surveillance is sustained typically not, but instead is ad hoc and reactive,
But a flu virus that emerges anywhere, at any time, can threaten the entire planet.
lack of data, says Ian Brown, head of avian virology and mammalian influenza at the Animal health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency lab in Weybridge, UK.
Timely global surveillance of animal flu viruses is crucial not just for identifying pandemic threats,
and pig flu deposited in the US National Center for Biotechnology Information s Influenza Virus Sequence Database between 2003 and 2011.
and several large flu sequencing projects, including the Influenza Genome Sequencing Project a major initiative run by the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious diseases (NIAID) to boost the sequencing of existing isolates. The analysis covered all subtypes of flu virus, not just H5n1.
That s important, says Malik Peiris, a flu virologist and surveillance expert at the University of Hong kong,
because"H5n1 is not the sole pandemic candidate, and low pathogenic viruses are just as likely, if not more likely,
to become pandemic. The number of avian flu sequences deposited in the database skyrocketed between 2003 and 2010,
before dropping off in 2011. The number of pig sequences deposited remained relatively flat from 2003 to 2010
before jumping dramatically in 2011. However, few contemporary data are available. The number of avian flu sequences from isolates collected in each year peaks in 2007
and plummets thereafter. The jump in the number of pig sequences also disappears (see Delayed sequencing.
Roughly 30%of the sequences are from isolates collected before 2003. The 2007 peak in avian viral sampling was largely the result of surveys of more than 100,000 wild birds to monitor for the arrival of H5n1 in the Americas1,
The Influenza Genome Sequencing Project is also helping by generating vast quantities of sequences it now accounts for half of all avian
An exception is the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance a network created by the NIAID in 2007 to boost flu surveillance
which has a policy of releasing all sequence data within 45 days of its collection.
The two agencies responsible for monitoring disease outbreaks in animals the Food and agriculture organization (FAO) of the United nations and the World organisation for Animal health (OIE) stipulate that sequences of potentially zoonotic viruses should be deposited in public databases within 3 months
says Ilaria Capua an avian-flu researcher at the Veterinary Public health Institute in Legnaro, Italy, who champions greater availability of sequences5.
Just 7 of the 39 countries with more than 100 million poultry in 2010 collected more than 1, 000 avian flu samples between 2003 and 2011.
Surveillance of avian flu viruses is bad, but that of pig viruses is worse. Yet pigs are a serious pandemic risk:
they can be infected co with both human and avian flu strains, which means that they provide ample opportunity for gene swapping and, thereby,
the emergence of pandemic strains such as the 2009 H1n1 pandemic virus. The world is home to some 1 billion domestic pigs, almost half
of which are in China, yet only 7, 679 pig flu sequences were collected between 2003 and 2011.
Just three countries the United states, China and Hong kong  collected more than 1, 000 swine flu sequences each,
and around 200 countries collected none at all. Five of those countries-Russia Poland, the Philippines, Denmark and The netherlands are each home to more than 10 million pigs.
In pigs, flu tends to be mild, so there is little economic incentive for surveillance. Moreover, the pork industry often doesn t want the negative image of having swine flu detected in its farms.
Research teams at Hong kong University, including one led by virologist Malik Peiris, are compiling one of the world's single largest sources of pig sequences.
The pandemic risk posed by pigs has risen also since 2009. The 2009 pandemic H1n1 virus,
which is now endemic in pigs, is unusual in that it contains the triple reassortant internal gene (TRIG) cassette,
a highly conserved set of six genes that allows the virus to swap genes with flu viruses from other species much more freely than the seasonal H1n1 that circulated before 2009 (see Pandemic 2009 H1n1 virus gives wings to avian flu).
but"we are noting lots of reassortment between the pandemic virus and endemic swine viruses, says Peiris.
globally changing the swine influenza virus landscape, says Peiris.""This certainly is a source of concern for public health.
and a well-structured and hygienic farming industry inevitably have fewer flu sequences to report,
or no sequences have poor veterinary systems and flu-prone farming systems, such as backyard farms and mixed poultry and pig farms,
which are often close to wild ducks and other flu reservoirs.""Proper geographic representation is lacking, says van der Werf,
or report, outbreaks so that they can claim they are free of infection and so avoid trade problems.
Flu experts say that the dire state of surveillance could be turned rapidly around by, for example, creating a network of sentinel sites,
The problem is that no global body has overall responsibility for flu surveillance. The World health organization (WHO) runs a global network of labs for human flu surveillance
and selects human strains to be included in vaccines for seasonal flu. Monitoring animals falls to the FAO,
which tends to focus on food security, and the OIE, which looks mostly at animal health and trade.
which can cause kidney and liver damage and bladder cancer. Medicinal use of the herb probably explains high rates of bladder cancer in Taiwan,
according to a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2. At least one of the four medicines that contained Aristolochia DNA also contained aristolochic acid.
which can cause severe allergic reactions. But many PLANT DNA sequences could not be pinned to individual species,
among these thousands of ingredients, there were not a few that have the potential to do more good than harm.
However, my impression is that we are a very long way from instilling proper science into this area such that patients are not at risk of either direct harm
or the indirect harm of treating serious conditions with useless supplements
Monkey genetics track social statusimagebroker/FLPAGROOMING is one way in which rhesus macaques show deference and curry favour.
One investigation, known as the Whitehall study2, found that low-ranking British civil servants suffer higher rates of illness and death than their superiors.
and is hoping to examine how social rank affects the macaques'susceptibility to infection
Million-year-old ash hints at origins of cookinggreatstock Photographic Library/Alamythe plant and animal ash was found thirty metres inside the Wonderwerk Cave beyond the reach of a lightning strike.
They also hope it will help in the development of tomatoes that can survive pests, pathogens and even climate change,
Bovine TB disguised by liver flukebovine tuberculosis (btb) could be spreading across Britain because the most widely used test for the disease is ineffective
Researchers tested milk from dairy herds across England and Wales for antibodies against F. hepatica, an indication of infection,
If they assumed that a fluke infection inhibited btb detection, they achieved a closer match between the model and actual btb detection rates.
an infectious disease specialist at the University of Liverpool, UK, and an author of the paper, says the result helps explain why btb is still endemic across England and Wales."
questions whether the liver fluke hides infections.""Cattle carcasses are inspected in abattoirs and we would see evidence of TB in the slaughtered animals
showing that animals with preexisting tuberculosis had reduced sensitivity to the skin test when they were infected with liver fluke2.
and new infection sites crop up long distances from existing hotspots. Eradicating liver fluke could increase the sensitivity of the skin test
and btb causes 10%of human tuberculosis deaths in Africa.""We know that a similar immune mechanism exists in humans,
Malaria surge fearedthe war to bring malaria to heel has made slow but steady progress during the past decade,
says David Brandling-Bennett, the senior adviser for infectious diseases at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington,
Such failures could reverse the recent drop in malaria mortality credited to insecticide spraying in the home and coating of bed nets,
WHOTHE WHO report says that insecticide-resistant mosquitoes already inhabit 64 Â malaria-ridden countries (see map.
To implement all of THE WHO s suggestions would cost $200 Â million on top of the $6 Â billion that THE WHO requested last year to fund existing malaria-control programmes.
director of the Global Malaria Programme at THE WHO, hopes that the report will draw more funds to the table as donors grasp the situation."
But the two largest players in malaria aid the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,
and the US President s Malaria Initiative (PMI) have not yet pledged additional money to fight resistance.
Their spending on mosquito control is already high in 2009,39%of the Global Fund s malaria expenditures went towards insecticide-treated bed nets and household spraying,
In the meantime, health officials may be able to keep malaria at bay by swapping insecticides. The report notes that in Colombia
"In some countries, malaria control means one person sitting in one room, and he s lucky if he s got a chair,
As the United states first genetically engineered (GE) pigs with muscular dystrophy, the creatures could be used to test treatments for the disease.
and pharmaceutical laboratories, has bred so far about 275 Â pigs some with cystic fibrosis, others with heart disease, arrhythmia or cancer,
and now muscular dystrophy. Because pigs mimic these human diseases more closely than mice, they are desirable models for drug testing
In 2009, the company submitted its first application to the FDA for approval of its cystic fibrosis pig model."
Unethical research A US court has dismissed a lawsuit by Guatemalan citizens against US officials over American researchers who intentionally infected Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases in the 1940s (see Nature 482
Mikovits theft case Chronic-fatigue-syndrome researcher Judy Mikovits is no longer facing criminal charges for stealing lab notebooks, computers and other material from her former employer, the Whittemore
although Mikovits (known for her now-retracted work linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a virus) still faces a civil suit from the institute.
Farmers say it is impossible to avoid growing GM soya because of contamination, and in April they won a challenge in the state of Rio grande do Sul,
Mercury poisoning can cause vomiting and diarrhoea and, in more extreme cases, brain or kidney damage.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of harm Peruvians are divided still over the findings. Some march through Puerto Maldonado s main plaza shouting through megaphones that mercury is killing everyone,
Manney sees zoonotic diseases those that can spread to humans as posing an even greater source of risk and uncertainty.
"Very complex procedures are involved in dealing with zoonotic diseases, and there s no way to know what emerging diseases that the lab will be handling ten or twelve years from now and
and estimating them has been a headache for researchers. The uncertainties have been as large as 20%3. Guan s study is the first close, systematic look that is based on official energy figures.
Mapping identifies best targets for malaria preventiona slim but substantial swathe of Africa stands to gain from a new strategy in malaria control.
The estimates are based on the world s first guidance on seasonal malaria chemoprevention, issued by the World health organization (WHO) in March.
and donors seeking to use anti-malaria drugs as prophylactics in African children, and the analysis pinpoints where the strategy would be most effective,
an infectious-disease physician at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-author of the analysis,
director of THE WHO's Global Malaria Programme in Geneva.""But for policies with a number of requirements, we need these sorts of analyses to help policymakers chart the path forward.
malaria burden, predicted malaria seasonality and the efficacy of the drug combination sulphadoxine, pyrimethamine and amodiaquine (SP-AQ.
the malaria-prevention pills that many tourists take when they visit these countries. At this low price
says Greenwood. from Ref 1areas with seasonal rainfall (orange-red) are most suitable for seasonal malaria chemoprevention.
One of the world s largest malaria-control organizations, the President s Malaria Initiative in WASHINGTON DC, may help carefully selected countries to implement the strategy,
Another argument was based on the idea that African children are more vulnerable to severe malaria than adults
But little evidence supports the hypothesis that people who don't get malaria as a child will fare worse than those who do
and financially impractical because malaria ravishes impoverished countries with feeble infrastructure. Debates about chemoprevention came to a halt when simpler modes of malaria prevention,
like bednets, hit the scene.""Once bed nets came along, everyone, including me, took their eyes off the ball
bed nets have halved the number of malaria cases, and seasonal chemoprevention has reduced the remaining cases  by about 80%.
%Seasonal chemoprevention would not be effective in some of the countries with the highest mortality from malaria,
Philip Rosenthal, a malaria researcher at the University of California, San francisco, agrees, but stresses the need to explore strategies that could be used elsewhere, too.
"but I d counter that the international community has gotten millions of children antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV in the developing world,
and genetically modifying plants to feed the world s population. go. nature. com/m128l22 August The governing board of the Cancer Prevention
George s"liver and kidneys appear to have some abnormalities, which the laboratories need to investigate in depth.
and livestock provide ripe conditions for endemic zoonotic diseases to arise and spread, the study says.
and the United kingdom, are hotspots of emerging zoonotic infections, such as avian influenza.""Zoonoses present a major threat to human and animal health.
The burden for poor farmers is big, says Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi,
but zoonotic disease are a major obstacle to this goal. For example, the study estimates that one in eight livestock animals in poor countries are affected by brucellosis,
reducing milk and meat production in cattle by 8%.In addition, 27%of livestock in developing countries showed signs of current
or past infection with bacterial food-borne disease. The latest research will help direct efforts
The study builds on previous efforts to rank zoonotic diseases affecting the poor. But those efforts relied on the opinions of experts
the United kingdom and Australia are the key hotspots for emerging zoonotic diseases. It is unclear why endemic diseases
NIH funding The US National institutes of health (NIH) will fund an initiative to help extramural researchers to diagnose mysterious maladies
and making unsupported safety claims about its diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone). The settlement was announced last November,
is buying Amylin for its lucrative diabetes treatments. As part of the deal, announced on 29 Â June,
Pig fever sweeps across Russiarussian authorities have incinerated tens of thousands of pigs and closed roads in the past few weeks,
in an attempt to contain an emerging outbreak of African swine fever, a viral disease so lethal to the animals that it has been likened to Ebola.
the Russian Federation lost 300,000 of the country s 19 million pigs to swine fever, at an estimated cost of about 7. 6  billion  roubles (US$240  million).
African swine fever was detected also for the first time in Ukraine in late July, and European and Asian countries are on the alert to deal with outbreaks that could cost their pork industries billions of dollars.
Scientists first encountered African swine fever in the 1920s in domestic pigs in Kenya, where the vicious haemorrhagic fever felled nearly every animal infected.
says Linda Dixon, an expert on African swine fever at the Institute for Animal health in Pirbright, UK.
before fanning out across Russia (see Pig plague). Source: C. Netherton/OIETHE recent spread of the virus means that the Ukrainian outbreak,
The variety of ways in which African swine fever spreads only increases the uncertainty. Pigs can leave virus particles on transport vehicles,
The FAO warns that continued spread of African swine fever could be very costly Russia does not export its pork,
African swine fever was especially costly in South Ossetia during a 2008 conflict with Georgia,
While animal health officials focus on containing the spread of African swine fever, scientists believe that it should be possible to develop a vaccine to eradicate the disease.
The lucky few pigs that survive infection are rendered immune, so Dixon s lab and others are working to identify which of the virus s 175
Swine-flu alert The number of reported cases in an outbreak of H3n2v virus a variant strain of swine flu that can pass from pigs to humans took a sudden spike last week.
because it contains a gene from the H1n1 pandemic strain that may increase transmissibility among humans.
3 9 august 2012h5n1 moratorium Researchers should continue a self-imposed moratorium on lab studies that give new properties to the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5n1, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious diseases. Fauci was speaking at a meeting of flu researchers in New york city.
The moratorium has been in place since late January; it was planned originally to last 60 days. See go. nature. com/3zwwq5 for more.
because they could bring pathogens into the facility. See go. nature. com/t7am4p for more.
Texas grant review The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) in Austin has appointed a compliance officer to review
Cancer vaccine The biotech firm behind the first approved cancer vaccine will slash 41%of its workforce, after tepid sales of its Provenge (sipuleucel-T) therapy for some prostate cancers.
Alzheimer s setback Research has been halted on a keenly watched experimental drug aimed at treating Alzheimer s disease after it failed two late-stage clinical trials.
that may cause neurodegeneration in patients with Alzheimer s. But in two phase III trials one reported on 23 july
Officials act to secure cattle-plague virusrinderpest, a devastating cattle disease, has not been seen in the wild for a decade,
but it lives on in scores of labs. Twelve months after the world celebrated the success of a years-long vaccination campaign that made rinderpest only the second disease after smallpox to be eradicated,
Rinderpest is as deadly to cattle as highly pathogenic H5n1 avian flu is to chickens. In past decades, outbreaks ripped through herds and wiped out up to 90%of animals, often leaving famine,
a member of a seven-person multidisciplinary Joint Advisory Committee (JAC) on rinderpest that was set up to consolidate the eradication by the Rome-based Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO) and the Paris-based World organisation for Animal health (OIE).
The committee would also approve all future research on live rinderpest virus to ensure that its benefits outweigh the risks.
or shipped to approved high-security labs. The approach is modelled on the post-eradication phase of the smallpox campaign
the Middle east and Asia, where rinderpest outbreaks were common until recently, and a handful of established rinderpest research centres,
such as the Institute for Animal health in Pirbright, UK, and the Plum Island Animal disease Center in New york state.
After smallpox was eradicated, a lab accident in Birmingham, UK, resulted in two infections and one death.
And an accidental release of foot -and-mouth virus from the Pirbright facility, which houses  a high-biosecurity,
-and-mouth and rinderpest, caused an outbreak in the United kingdom in 2007. Active research on rinderpest has waned as the disease has been brought under control over the past few decades,
says Michael Baron, a rinderpest researcher at the Pirbright centre. He and others say that the biggest threat is forgotten from long samples of virus from past research programmes,
and serum and other samples collected for diagnostic or other purposes, that may be lurking in lab freezers.
Rinderpest vaccine strains, which are stocked in many countries and consist of live attenuated virus, are also a concern.
Until the world is certain that rinderpest is gone for good, vaccine strains will need probably to be maintained in high-security labs in several regions
But he says that just a couple of pure-research labs would be enough to pursue the valuable scientific opportunities that rinderpest still offers.
Although the virus is closely similar to the human measles virus, for example, cattle don t catch measles
and humans don t catch rinderpest. Understanding why this is so could provide insight into the pathology and basic biology of viruses,
Baron says. Of more immediate interest, investigators would also like to know whether vaccines can be developed against another related virus, the sheep and goat disease called peste des petits ruminants,
that might also protect against rinderpest. That would eliminate the need to keep any stocks of live attenuated rinderpest virus at all.
Baron s home lab contains more than 100 Â different rinderpest virus isolates, which he says represent"basically the history of the disease.
He intends to sequence them all in the next few years so that they can be recreated if ever needed
and then destroy them
Seven days: 21 27 september 2012drug-makers unite Ten giant pharmaceutical companies have formed a nonprofit organization called Transcelerate Biopharma, with the goal of making clinical trials more efficient.
Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State Univ. AZT-maker dies Jerome Horwitz, the chemist who inadvertently created the first antiretroviral drug for AIDS,
Horwitz (pictured) created AZT in the 1960s to combat cancer, but he shelved the drug after it showed little efficacy against the disease.
when it was found to be effective against AIDS. Horwitz received no money for his discovery
but he did go on to produce treatments for diseases such as cancer at the Wayne State university School of medicine in Detroit, Michigan,
Cancer ambitions A leading US cancer centre said last week that it will spend up to US$3 Â billion over the next ten years on a programme to significantly increase the odds of surviving eight cancers.
Under the Moon shots initiative, research teams at the MD Â Anderson Cancer Center in Houston,
Texas, will focus on cancer of the prostate, lung and ovary, and on a type of breast cancer as well as melanoma, two leukaemias and a related blood syndrome.
See go. nature. com/lrevbl for more. XMRV ruled out The retrovirus XMRV is linked not to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS
a definitive study that cost US$2. 3  million concluded on 18  September. A 2009 paper found signs of XMRV infection in people with CFS (V.  C.  Lombardi et  al.
Science 326,585-589; 2009), but was retracted in 2011 because of concerns that the results were caused by contamination.
The latest study (H.  J.  Alter et  al. mbio 3, e00266-12;
It reported that the rats developed higher levels of cancers had larger cancerous tumours and died earlier than controls.
The researchers have not conclusively identified a mechanism for the effect. The rats were monitored for two years (almost their whole life  span),
Other scientists point out that the Sprague-Dawley strain of rats used in the experiments has been shown to be susceptible to developing tumours spontaneously,
and that many fewer control rats developed tumours in middle age. The 90-day trial of Monsanto s NK603 maize used in its authorization also used Sprague-Dawley rats,
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