Brucellosis is caused by the bacteria Brucella abortus so named because it causes cattle to miscarry their fetuses.
Although a 2011 study said that the measures have not been successful in reducing the prevalence of brucellosis in the overall population there hasn t yet been documented a case of transmission between Yellowstone bison and livestock.
#Unleashing An Epidemic To Kill The Tumbleweedsdana Berner wants to start an epidemic among tumbleweeds.
which a species is susceptible to certain pathogens based on its genetics. The model is used a widely one for checking
Only a few species were vulnerable to infection at all. Those that were didn't seem to suffer in overall health from the infection.
One helpful fact: Plant diseases tend to infect closely related species and there are no plants native to the U s. that share tumbleweeds'Genus salsola.
Now it's a question of waiting which depends in part on whether the approval committee is convinced by Berner and his coworkers'safety tests.
We know what we have to do to prevent irreparable harm. We have the technological imagination
The contamination was so widespread that experts have estimated between 4000 and 93000 extra cancer deaths have occurred
And since wild boar dig through soil for food they are affected particularly by this contamination. They also eat underground mushrooms and deer truffles
#The Swine flu You Can Get From American County Fairsbefore 2012 outbreaks of so-called influenza A variant infections in the U s. only popped up once in a while in the medical literature.
Then in 2012 healthcare workers across the U s. reported 309 human cases of influenza A (H3n2) variant also known as H3n2v.
However this kind of research only draws conclusions based on people's sickness and their behaviors. Now a new in depth study of the genetics of H3n2v in swine and humans in Ohio shows the epidemiological studies were right.
Samples of flu viruses taken from pigs and from people in Ohio during the 2012 outbreak were genetically close to one another according to the study
In addition all of the cases recorded across the state were more than 99.5 percent similar to one another genetically indicating that it was just one flu strain that took residence in humans and swine alike.
It's a little funny to think of getting a flu from a pig at the county fair.
That's not exactly the kind of scene you imagine for the beginning of a sci-fi movie about the next big pandemic.
which influenza viruses evolve. Swine are susceptible to avian human and swine flus and these virus can circulate inside pigs for varying lengths of time with no signs of illness.
This makes them great meet-markets for flu viruses to exchange genetic material. The H1n1 flu that reached pandemic proportions in 2009 first spent some time circulating among pigs in Asia Europe and North america.
Luckily H3n2v doesn't readily move between people which limits its ability to spread. People mostly catch it directly from swine.
The U s. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that people who are susceptible to complications from the flu--such as young kids older adults
and pregnant women--avoid pig barns at fairs. Keeping away from sick-looking pigs is important but not adequate.
Seven of those 10 fairs were associated with reported human illnesses. And even more scary six of those seven fairs didn't have any sick-looking pigs.
which was published in the September issue of the journal Emerging Infectious diseases. That probably means more investigators gathering poogers at fairs.
A nasty virus that causes severe diarrhea in pigs has killed off an estimated 5-10 percent of pigs in the United states causing prices to rise dramatically.
because malaria yellow fever dysentery and other diseases claimed the lives of approximately 20000 workers. The U s. took over the project in 1904 and implemented some sanitation practices--including draining wetlands
The land of the jungle where the mosquito sang her weird song of death unmolested for four hundred years vying with the germs of dysentery typhoid fever and pneumonia in the destruction of human life;
The heavy rainfall insures permanent stagnant water where the larvae of the yellow fever and malarial mosquitos thrive in countless millions;
Yellow fever had been endemic for hundreds of years and epidemic when new material was available. Malaria was ever present consuming the life blood
and limiting the capacity of generation after generation of the native population and attacking the unacclimated with vigor and fatality.
Typhoid fever was very common and the ravages of dysentery were sorely distressing. The history of the Isthmus is linked inseparably with disease and death.
For more than three hundred years it was the favorite highway from ocean to ocean and many thousands perished en route from tropical disease.
The Panama railroad is only forty-five miles long but it took five years to build it
which yellow fever has been banished for more than six years; where the mortality from typhoid fever and dysentery has been reduced to the minimum;
where malaria has become mild and controllable; the country where the deaths per thousand among canal employees instead of De Lesseps's 240 is only seven and one half.
It is almost unbelievable but it is true. Among white American employees the death rate is less than three per thousand.
and fumigation resorted to when necessary in handling contagious diseases. Rotting vegetable and animal matter offal
a hospital car was run with every train for the ill or the injured; medical and surgical service was skilled
Shall we go on permitting hundreds of thousands of people to die of preventable diseases like typhoid fever malaria and tuberculosis?
#Ticks That Can Make People Severely Allergic To Meat Are Spreading In The U s . But a few hours after dinner Abley started itching like mad.
At the hospital doctors determined he had gone into anaphylactic shock potentially deadly allergic reaction. Fortunately Abley pulled through
And it wasn t just the beef he was allergic to; it was practically all red meat.
Abley is one of at least 1500 people in the United states who suffer allergic reactions after eating meat
But what s even more bizarre is the source of the allergy. The condition called alpha-gal allergy is caused by the bite of a Lone Star tick species traditionally found mostly in the Southern United states
but has spread farther north in recent years. And as the tick spreads more and more cases of meat allergies are being reported.
In one area of Long island New york for example one doctor we spoke with has seen an increase of 200 cases in the past three years p from practically zero in 2011.
The connection between Lone Star ticks and meat allergies in America first came to light in 2008.
At the time Thomas Platts-Mills and Scott Commins both allergy specialists at the University of Virginia Health System were trying to understand why some of their patients had developed a severe allergic reactions to cetuximab an intravenous cancer-fighting drug.
the southeastern United states. So a lab technician Googled for medical conditions that fit geographically with the allergy they were seeing.
Sure enough they found that Rocky mountain spotted fever tickborne disease ffected the same areas. We went back to our patients
Around the same time more and more healthy patients began reporting meat allergies (one of them being Abley.
Like the patients allergic to cetuximab these patients were also predominantly from the Southeast a region crawling with ticks.
and Commins to figure out the allergies were connected nd that the link was alpha-gal sugar.
which makes the tickborne meat allergy so surprising. Moreover the patients of Commins and Platts-Mills weren born t with the condition
and they reportedly showed symptoms much later in life unique trait for an allergy. So the doctors finally asked the question they'd wanted to
Are ticks actually causing this alpha-gal allergy? In a series of revealing experiments they sampled blood from their patients with meat allergies
and combined them with various tick extracts. They discovered that the Ige antibodies in their patients blood samples binded to the Lone Star tick extract;
meanwhile the same antibodies from people without the meat allergy did not glom onto the tick proteins.
Despite identifying the vessel for the mysterious meat allergy Commins and Platts-Mills say many questions remain unanswered about the condition.
or if only some do (as is the case with Lyme disease which is caused by a bacterium).
As Commins and Platts-Mills struggle to understand the mechanisms behind this allergy the number of cases they re seeing is trending upward nd the allergy is confined no longer to the south.
Dr. Erin Mcgintee an allergist on New york s Long island who s worked with the UVA team has diagnosed approximately 200 cases of this allergy in the area she works.
I don t think it s a nationwide epidemic but as the Lone Star tick geographical distribution increases
I think it s going to be a regional epidemic in many areas. Meanwhile many of the meat allergy sufferers have had to adjust to a new normal.
Abley initially refused to accept his diagnosis experimenting with different meats to see if he could tolerate them.
I d rather have the allergy than leave that
#Can Biohackers Succeed At Making'Real Vegan Cheese'?'A group of Oakland California-based biohackers believe they can create real vegan cheese.
#MERS Virus May be Able To Spread Through The Air Research strongly suggests that camels carry Middle east Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) a viral illness that has sickened nearly 700
One frequently cited study published in 2012 by researchers from the University of Caen in France claimed that one of Monsanto's corn GMOS caused tumors in lab rats.
which prevents the production of histamines that can trigger headaches. It also improves flavor and color.*
whose milk is designed to prevent deadly diarrhea in children and chickens in which bird flu viruses don't reproduce.
In spite of public opposition and a lack of funding GM meat research has continued to advance. One major trend:
and heart diseases would also decrease under the plan although it doesn't regulate them directly.
Rising temperatures bring more smog more asthma and longer allergy seasons. If your kid doesn t use an inhaler consider yourself a lucky parent said Mccarthy
because 1 in 10 children in the U s. suffers from asthma. Carbon pollution from power plants comes packaged with other dangerous pollutants like particulate matter nitrogen oxides
The Stanford team avoided rejection by permanently suppressing their subjects immune systems a solution that would leave humans vulnerable to catastrophic disease and infection.
Although bioweapon stockpiles are in short supply (with very good reason) Mathaudhu is confident that geneticists could synthesize whatever new plagues seem useful.
The technology that has revolutionized genetic analysis allowing for whole-genome sequencing of human DNA could also enable a precision pathogen of last resort.
By the time you've settled the quarrel with the neighbors your kids are making a sound like whooping cough.
#The Disquieting Delights Of Salt-Rising Breadas befits a nasty pathogen Clostridium perfringens grows aggressively. Its cells can divide every ten minutes a handful turning into trillions of hydrogen makers overnight.
A century ago a scientist went so far as to bake bread leavened with Clostridium perfringens drawn from an infected wound in
The realization that the salt-rising bacterium was a form of pathogen came in 1923 when a USDA microbiologist named Stuart A. Koser analyzed commercial salt-rising starters.
but it was implicated in gangrenous flesh wounds. So Koser checked to see whether bakery loaves of salt-rising bread contained any of the bacillus. Indeed they did but in the form of spores rather than live cells.
and found that they didn't cause gangrene. Koser then wondered if a known disease strain could grow well enough in dough to leaven it
Less understandably he didn't test the wound-risen bread for toxicity. But his creepy experiment made clear that there were different strains of the bacillus with different toxicities
and'50s that scientists recognized Clostridium perfringens as a leading cause of foodborne illness as well as wound infections Since then they've found that there are at least five major types of the bacterium that produce different toxins and cause different kinds of disease.
and found that all of them contained strains of Clostridium perfringens type A the group associated with food poisoning rather than wound infection.
and the lack of any known cases of the bread causing illness Juckett and Mcclane concluded that it seems reasonable to continue the consumption of this delicious old-fashioned bread.
and other vegetables to follow in part to be eaten by people with kidney disease or on dialysis who cannot handle vegetables with high levels of potassium.
The international delegation of researchers shared their own approaches to the malady hoping to arrive at some strategy to insulate Mozambique and the rest of Africa:
I originally reported on the malady that s now infecting the Mozambique plantation in the August 2005 print edition of Popular Science.
the malady is so virulent that a single clump of dirt on a shoe or a tool can lead to continent-wide infection.
Philippine banana growers have been struggling with Foc-TR4 since the 1990s and the workers in Mozambique were employed by Chiquita management and then by a company called Matanuska
Likewise infection from common irrigation sources was one of the primary ways the Gros Michel version of Panama Disease spread in the mid-20th century.
and when you burn them you get a whole cocktail of cancer-causing stuff. Puckett estimated that just more than half of the material processed in Guiyu actually got recycled judging from the tons of plastic leaded glass and burned circuit boards discarded near waterways and in open fields.
In 2002 BAN produced a film about his trip called Exporting Harm: The High-tech Trashing of Asia.
In 2010 The Economist honored him with one of its awards for energy and the environment (along with Steve jobs and Harald zur Housen a Nobel-winning cancer researcher).
The upshot is that shipments of recyclables into the country must truly be recyclables not contaminants or waste.
Our poor boy had the rare case of second rash and sore throat...and as if this was not enough a most serious attack of erysipelas with typhoid symptoms.
I despaired of his life; but this evening he has eaten one mouthful and I think has passed the crisis. He has lived on port wine every three-quarters of an hour day and night.
They also check the modules and the plants'leaves for contaminants which may come from the space station's environment.
New research you see has found that chemicals excreted by microbes in sloth fur had potent activity against a host of human pathogens
and even breast cancer cells and possess anti-malaria and antibacterial properties. The study found that chemicals isolated from fungi in three-toed sloths were deadly for parasites that cause malaria and Chagas disease (Plasmodium falciparum and Trypanosoma cruzi respectively.
The research was only a partial cataloguing of microbes that live in sloth fur which the scientists describe as a potential goldmine for drug discovery.
Several of the chemicals isolated from the fungi also showed strong activity against human breast cancer cells. a
#100 Years Of Smoking Studies In Popular Sciencefifty years ago tomorrow then-U s. Surgeon general Luther Terry held a press conference announcing that among other ills smoking caused lung cancer.
the number of scientific studies the U s. surgeon general's advisory committee examined before declaring that smoking caused lung cancer laryngeal cancer and chronic bronchitis17. 7 million:
A chain-smoking doctor among Terry's expert report authors was diagnosed with lung cancer within a year of the surgeon general's announcement NPR reports.
At the same time there are hints throughout Popular Science's archives suggesting people knew that they should try to quit that evidence was accumulating for smoking's long-term harms
Fast-forwarding to the years preceding the 1964 surgeon general's report scientists were gathering more rigorous evidence that smoking causes various illnesses including lung cancer.
The U s. Public health Service for example has reported that among veterans who died from lung cancer over a certain period about 10 times as many had been smokers igarette smokers s nonsmokers.
USPHS has reported also that the death rate from coronary heart disease among cigarette smokers was almost two-thirds higher than the rate for nonsmokers.
After a 20 percent plunge immediately following the lung cancer warning tobacco sales were back to normal it reported.
All the needles and the thread they themselves cause injury to the healthy tissue he says.
Ilagan learned that widely publicized studies purporting to show ill health effects from eating genetically modified foods have been discounted.
Evidences given by the authors suggest that M. mali was introduced probably during the breeding program on Elms against the Dutch elm disease (DED) during
Mounting evidence cited in the journal shows resistant pathogens are emerging in the wake of this veritable flood of antibiotics--resulting in an increase in bacteria that is immune to available treatments.
Modern medicine relies on antibiotics to kill off bacterial infections explains Hollis. This is incredibly important. Without effective antibiotics any surgery--even minor ones--will become extremely risky.
Cancer therapies similarly are dependent on the availability of effective antimicrobials. Ordinary infections will kill otherwise healthy people.
Bacteria that can effectively resist antibiotics will thrive Hollis adds reproducing rapidly and spreading in various ways.
The current mountain pine beetle epidemic has spread across 3. 4 million acres in Colorado since the outbreak was detected first in 1996.
#Greater dietary fiber intake associated with lower risk of heart diseasein recent years a decline in both cardiovascular disease (CVD)
and coronary heart disease (CHD) has been seen in some European countries and the United states. However it still remains a significant issue accounting for almost half (48)
In an accompanying editorial Dr Robert Baron Professor of Medicine at the University of California says this study increases our confidence that benefit as reflected by reduced cardiovascular disease
and coronary heart disease events will in fact accrue with higher dietary fiber intakes. He says that teaching patients to eat whole grains is still challenging
#Biologists find clues to a parasites inconsistencytoxoplasma gondii a parasite related to the one that causes malaria infects about 30 percent of the world's population.
but a small percentage develop encephalitis or ocular toxoplasmosis which can lead to blindness. MIT biologist Jeroen Saeij and his colleagues are trying to figure out why some forms of the disease are so innocuous
while others ravage their victims. In their latest paper they analyzed 29 strains of the parasite
Infection rates vary around the world: In the United states it's about 10 to 15 percent
and Europe usually cause problems only in people with suppressed immune systems such as AIDS patients or transplant recipients although some atypical North american and European strains have been associated with severe ocular toxoplasmosis.
It can also be dangerous for a woman to become infected while pregnant as the parasite can cause birth defects.
In South america there is a much higher incidence of severe symptoms in otherwise healthy people. Scientists are still unsure
Hyperinflammatory responsein the new study which appears this week in the journal PLOS Pathogens Saeij
and host--are most active during infection. Most strikingly some South american and some atypical North american strains induced a type of immune reaction usually only seen during viral infection known as the type 1 interferon response.
This generates very strong inflammation in the host cells which the researchers suspect may be causing the severe effects produced by those strains.
She notes that a strain adapted to long-term survival in rats may cause a fatal infection in mice
and ultimately limit production losses attributed to helminth infection. A key advantage to applying genetic selection rather than chemicals to get rid of the worms is that it is permanent
when epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) the major extractable polyphenol in green tea and the most biologically active when diluted in skim milk or other milk complexes remains bioactive and continues to reduce colon cancer cell proliferation in culture
Tea polyphenols have been shown to inhibit tumor formation reduce cancer cell proliferation increase normal cell death (apoptosis)
and/or suppress the formation of new blood vessels feeding tumors (angiogenesis). For several reasons tea catechins have poor bioavailability
and reduce the devastating impacts of conditions such as diabetes and obesity. The study SNAP Education and Evaluation Study (Wave II) evaluated the impact of several nutrition education programs on fruit and vegetable consumption among low-income elementary school children and seniors.
#Diet rich in tomatoes may lower breast cancer riska tomato-rich diet may help protect at-risk postmenopausal women from breast cancer according to new research accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal
Breast cancer risk rises in postmenopausal women as their body mass index climbs. The study found eating a diet high in tomatoes had a positive effect on the level of hormones that play a role in regulating fat and sugar metabolism.
while she was a postdoctoral fellow with Electra Paskett Phd at The Ohio State university Comprehensive Cancer Center--Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.
and vegetables would promote breast cancer prevention in an at-risk population. The longitudinal cross-over study examined the effects of both tomato-rich and soy-rich diets in a group of 70 postmenopausal women.
Researchers originally theorized that a diet containing large amounts of soy could be part of the reason that Asian women have lower rates of breast cancer than women in the United states
or delay around 8500 vascular deaths such as heart attacks and strokes every year in the UK--similar to giving statins to everyone over 50 years who is not already taking them--according to a study in the Christmas edition of The BMJ.
In the United kingdom lifestyle changes are recommended the first step to prevent heart disease. However trial data suggest that statins can reduce the risk of vascular events irrespective of a person's underlying risk of cardiovascular disease.
As such calls are being made for greater use of statins at a population level particularly for people aged 50 years and over.
However side-effects from statins mean that prescribing statins to everyone over the age of 50 is predicted to lead to over a thousand extra cases of muscle disease (myopathy) and over ten thousand extra diagnoses of diabetes.
This research adds weight to calls for the increased use of drugs for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease as well as for persevering with policies aimed at improving the nutritional quality of UK diets they conclude.
and that both drugs and healthier living can make a real difference in preventing heart disease and stroke.
Hybrid poplar trees which are grown usually in dense rows on flat land almost like a food crop are especially vulnerable to insect epidemics the researchers said.
When an animal stopped moving scientists saw a flat line much like the electrocardiogram of a heart-attack victim on their screens.
But these systems also pose significant public health risks (with the transmission of zoonotic diseases from these animals to people)
and malaria can combine to create global'hotspots'of climate change impacts4. The study is the first to identify hotspots across these sectors
#EU membership may have led to allergy increase in rural Polandpoland's entry into the EU may have had the surprising consequence of increasing allergies in rural villages according to a new study.
Surveys show that the prevalence of atopy a predisposition towards allergic reactions jumped from seven per cent to 20 per cent in villages in southwest Poland between 2003 and 2012.
Exposure to farm animals especially at a young age is thought to protect against developing allergies. The findings add to evidence that westernized lifestyles increase the risk of allergic diseases.
Previous research has suggested that farm dwellers especially children who grow up on farms have lower rates of hay fever
and atopy than people living in towns. Study author Professor Paul Cullinan from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London said:
Asthma hay fever and other allergic diseases are becoming more common in many countries and there's growing evidence that they're linked to modern clean lifestyles.
We found that rapid changes in farming practices after Poland joined the EU were accompanied by a sharp increase in allergies over a very short period of time.
It's likely that similar changes are occurring in other places in Europe and we can expect that elsewhere in the world we may see major increases in allergies asthma
and hay fever over the coming decades as countries become more westernized and less rural. Researchers from Wroclaw Medical University and Imperial College London conducted surveys in villages and a small town in southwest Poland in 2003 one year before Poland joined the EU
and 2012 to study the prevalence of asthma hay fever and atopy which is diagnosed with a skin prick test.
In 2003 7. 3 per cent of villagers tested positive for atopy compared with 20 per cent of townspeople.
In 2012 the prevalence of atopy in villages had risen to 19.6 per cent. hay fever also rose from 3. 0 per cent to 7. 7 per cent
but the prevalence of asthma did not change significantly. In towns there were no changes in the prevalence of allergies.
Twenty-four per cent of village dwellers had regular or occasional contact with cows in 2003 but this fell to four per cent in 2012.
Thirty-three per cent had contact with pigs in 2003 but only 14 per cent in 2012.
The study appears in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Imperial College London.
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