Food poisoning is caused by eating food contaminated by organisms such as bacteria viruses and parasites. Symptoms include nausea vomiting diarrhea abdominal cramps and fever.
and RNA VIRUSES such as`Deformed Wing Virus'she adds. In some of our experiments we want to infect bees with pathogens to see
Over the years yogurt manufacturers have experienced episodes of widespread lactic acid bacteria-culture death due to the activity of a virus that attacks the bacteria.
The virus injects their DNA into bacterial cells replicating inside and then causing bacterial cell lysis (i e. bursting) to release progeny phages (viruses).
We are trying to harness the innate ability of that lactic acid bacteriophage to control unwanted lactic acid bacteria during ethanol fermentation.
Each type of virus or phage kills only one type of bacteria. This specificity makes the phages safe enough for human consumption;
The method relies on a virus to insert the gene into the heart cells and although this virus cannot replicate itself
or integrate into the genome the pig experiments showed that a small amount of virus did end up in other organs in the animals besides the heart according to the study published today (July 16) in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
New biological pacemaker In healthy people a small region of the heart called the sinoatrial node fires the electrical impulses that determine heart rate.
because over time the pigs'bodies started to reject cells with the injected virus. The researchers are now testing how long the treatment lasts.
In the study a small amount of virus ended up in the pigs'spleens and lungs after it was injected
In addition it could be problematic if the virus ends up in multiple places in the heart and forms more than one biological pacemaker.
The good news though is that the two viruses that cause these cancers are largely preventable by vaccine-Hepatitis b
and human pappiloma virus. Plain and simple tobacco is bad. Causing 22%of all cancer deaths worldwide the good fight against tobacco tobacco advertising
although seasonal influenza activity is declining flu viruses continue to circulate and cause illness in parts of the U s. For example in New york state the numbers from the second week of April show influenza is still widespread with more than 2500 lab-confirmed cases.
and take everyday preventive actions to stop the virus'spread the CDC says. These include washing hands limiting contact with sick people
Diarrhea or loose bowel movements also is caused by many factors most commonly by viruses bacteria or an allergic reaction.
Other deadly viruses and possibly chemical contaminates play a roll as well. To stave the losses the USDA program will pay farmers
Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically attack bacteria. These phages as researchers call them have evolved alongside bacteria
Scientists are interested most in lytic phages viruses that inject their DNA into a bacterium and then hijack the cell s machinery to make new copies of the virus. The copies eventually burst through bacterium s membrane killing it
and attack neighboring cells. Recently a team of researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette Indiana developed a cocktail of different phages that was extremely effective against Escherichia coli o157:
#oeit s a microorganism the concept of putting a virus on foods is initially hard to swallow
Researchers have found a virus that typically infects plants has been systemically infecting honeybees in the United states and China.
It is now common and routine for researchers to screen bees in colonies for rare viruses.
The detection of this virus (the Tobacco Ringspot Virus or TRSV) could help explain the decline of honeybees
whether this plant-infecting virus could also cause systemic infection in the bees said Yan Ping Chen a study author who works at ARS.
The study results provide the first evidence that honeybees exposed to virus-contaminated pollen can also be infected
and whether such a virus could cause systemic infection in the honeybees. Since CCD was reported first to have wiped out entire hives across the United states in 2006 and 2007 more than 10 million hives in all researchers have linked strongly toxic viral cocktails to the collapse of the honeybee colonies.
Besides TRSV researchers have linked Israel Acute Paralysis Virus Acute Bee Paralysis Virus Chronic Paralysis Virus Kashmir Bee Virus Deformed Wing Bee Virus
Black Queen Cell Virus and Sacbrood Virus to some degree as causes of honeybee viral disease.
The TRSV virus is an especially dangerous type of host-jumping virus because it lacks an internal genomic process that edits out errors in replicated genomes meaning that TRSV can generate all sorts of variant error-filled copies with lots of different infection characteristics that cannot be defended easily once they jump from plants to honeybees and spread throughout the hives.
which these error-filled virus copies become a sort of cloud of genetically-related variants that seemingly work in concert to determine the pathology of their hosts.
Viruses such as TRSV once they jump species are a likely source of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases the researchers said in their mbio study.
The increasing prevalence of TRSV in conjunction with other bee viruses is associated with a gradual decline of host populations
but they may also boost a person's immunity when dealing with everyday viruses and infections like the common cold.
But despite the image of Ebola as a virus that mysteriously and randomly emerges from the forest the sites of the cases are far from random said Daniel Bausch a tropical medicine researcher at Tulane University who just returned from Guinea
A very dangerous virus got into a place in the world that is the least prepared to deal with it Bausch told Live Science.
The virus causing this outbreak is the deadliest type of Ebola virus. The Ebola virus has five species
This virus was previously found only in three countries in Central africa: the Democratic republic of the congo the Republic of the Congo and Gabon.
It is also possible that the virus was actually in West Africa before the current outbreak circulating in bats
Biological and ecological factors may drive emergence of the virus from the forest but clearly the sociopolitical landscape dictates where it goes from there an isolated case
Even if the Ebola virus had been circulating in Guinea for some time animals carrying the virus or other pathogens are not usually in the vicinity of humans
The virus attacks the worms every year, but usually occurs too late in their outbreak cycle to prevent serious crop damage.
The chances of spraying the virus in the current outbreak are zero, says Grzywacz, because the treatment hasn't been proved on the ground,
Nature Newswhen the Ebola Reston virus was discovered in pigs in the Philippines last year, it marked the virus's first known foray outside primates,
and raised fears of a potential threat to human health. Last week, a joint mission of 22 international health and veterinary experts returned from investigating the outbreak with more questions than answers about the virus's pathology and epidemiology.
The Ebola Reston virus was discovered first, in 1989, in crab-eating macaques imported to the United states from the Philippines.
Since then, the virus has killed most infected monkeys, yet had no effect on the 25 people that it infected unlike three of the four other strains of Ebola,
which kill between 25%and 90%of the humans they infect. Because few people come into close contact with primates in the Philippines,
By contrast, the appearance of the virus in an important livestock species was unexpected and worrying, says Pierre Rollin, an Ebola expert at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia,
Once inside the pig it may be possible for the virus to mutate into a version that is deadly to humans
as the avian influenza virus is thought to have done. And we still don't know what it might do to someone who is immunocompromised by HIV or by drugs,
But there seems to be little threat to human health from the current form of the virus. It is destroyed by cooking,
if they have developed antibodies to the virus. The investigation into the Ebola Reston infections began after farmers in the Philippines reported high mortality rates in their pigs in 2008.
samples from 28 dead pigs were sent to the Plum Island Animal disease Center in New york, where researchers found evidence of the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus, also known as blue-ear pig disease,
because histological samples showed that the virus had pervaded the spleen, similar to its mode of attack in monkeys.
Although Rollin does not expect to find the virus itself in these samples, the pigs may carry antibodies that should indicate an approximate mortality rate associated with exposure.
the infections resulted from contact with a reservoir of the virus, rather than spreading from animal to animal.
The virus is likely to be spread by bat droppings falling into the pigs'feed,
At this time, there is no evidence to indicate the development of widespread antiviral resistance among pandemic H1n1 viruses.
A report in Eurosurveillance estimates a reproduction number for the virus the average number of secondary cases generated by a single primary case of 2. 3 in Japan.
This virus may have given us a grace period, but we do not know how long this grace period will last,
A modeling study in Science suggests that the virus spreads at a rate comparable to that of previous influenza pandemics.
The latest 0505/en/index. html>WHO figures say the virus has now spread to 21 countries.
The pigs likely caught the virus from a Canadian who had visited recently Mexico, making this the first known case of human-to-animal transmission.
The agency also announces it will refer to the virus not as swine flu but as influenza A (H1n1.
Nature Newspublic-health experts are warning that a lack of surveillance may be allowing the 2009 pandemic H1n1 flu virus to go undetected in pigs.
This raises the risk that the virus could circulate freely between humans and pigs, making it more likely to reassort into a deadlier strain,
Their main concern tends to be that any reports of the pandemic virus in pigs might provoke overreactions such as the mass culling of pigs that took place in Egypt
So far the role of animals has not been demonstrated in the virus's epidemiology or spread,
The virus originated from a mixture of swine flu strains, and pigs are an obvious part of the epidemiology of the new virus,
says Smith. Yet the number of swine-flu sequences in the international Genbank database is about a tenth of that for avian flu viruses.
Circulation of the virus between pigs and humans is definitely a possibility he adds. The pandemic virus has so far been found in pigs from just one farm, in Alberta, Canada,
where it spread throughout the herd. But noone has been able to pin down how the herd became infected.
Scientists at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, UK, have shown that pigs can easily become infected with the virus,
and readily transmit it between themselves and shed it into the environment. Past pandemic viruses have gone also on to become endemic in pig populations.
It's absolutely surprising that a virus this contagious in both humans and swine and which has been reported in humans in 76 countries,
has only been reported in one swine farm in Canada, says Jimmy Smith, head of livestock affairs at the World bank in WASHINGTON DC,
Absence of evidence of the pandemic virus in pig populations is not evidence of absence,
The avian H5n1 flu virus leads to serious disease in poultry and causes huge economic losses,
flu viruses, although common, tend to cause only mild disease, so there is no obligation to report cases of swine flu,
however its member states to voluntarily report any occurrences of the 2009 pandemic virus in pigs.
Although the network has detected not yet the new virus in pigs, its coordinator Kristien Van Reeth,
an animal virologist at Ghent University in Belgium, admits that participating labs have taken just a few hundred to a thousand samples each over the past year.
-and public-health communities underestimated the potential for pigs to generate a pandemic virus . Although pigs can be infected with many subtypes of flu,
The emergence of the reassorted H1n1 pandemic virus which current research indicates noone has any immunity to, apart, perhaps,
H2 and H3 bird viruses, meaning that they would have no immunity. This shows that the world needs a comprehensive surveillance system of all influenza subtypes
Pandemic flu viruses brew for years before going global: Nature Newsfamily trees for pandemic influenza have revealed that components of deadly flu viruses probably lurk in humans
and other animals for years before they emerge as a worldwide threat to human health.
The work suggests that a more thorough characterization of circulating flu viruses could provide clues to an emerging pandemic before it hits.
According to results published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, two genes from the 1918 influenza virus,
would have been present in human and swine flu viruses at least 6 years earlier. During the intervening years
swine and human flu viruses would have swapped genes with avian viruses, ultimately giving rise to the dangerous assortment of genes carried by the 1918 virus. This work suggests that the generation of pandemic strains
and the adaptation to humans could be involved much more than was thought previously, says Raul Rabadan, a biomedical informatician at Columbia University college of Physicians and Surgeons in New york,
swine and human flu viruses and created family trees based on DNA sequence information. By estimating the amount of time it would take to accumulate the differences in DNA sequences found in human and swine viruses,
the researchers determined that a precursor to at least one 1918 flu gene was present in mammals before 1911.
and then swapped genes with mammalian flu viruses before becoming a pandemic. Meanwhile, elements of the 1957 pandemic flu virus also thought to be a mosaic of human
and avian flu genes were introduced probably into human populations two to six years before the pandemic, the researchers found.
Results from 1918 and 1957 pandemic flu suggest that public-health authorities should track the sequences of all influenza virus genes in emerging strains
Nevertheless, reliance upon patchy data from historical flu viruses has its limitations. Michael Worobey, who studies pathogen evolution at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says that his own analyses have suggested also that human
the pandemic H1n1 (swine flu virus currently circling the globe bears an uncanny resemblance to an influenza virus that wreaked havoc nearly a century ago,
For months, it has been apparent that swine flu strikes the young more often than the old an unusual pattern that suggests older patients could have been exposed to similar viruses in the past.
In all but the pig, the virus yields an infection in the lungs that is more severe than would be expected from an average seasonal flu, according to Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues,
are effective against the new pandemic virus in human cells grown in the lab. These drugs are already being used to treat some infected patients.
even though the virus reproduced capably in the swine respiratory system. This, the authors suggest, could explain why farmers have not reported an outbreak of sick pigs.
The animal studies used higher doses of virus than humans would normally encounter a practice that is common for such experiments.
Nevertheless, one alarming feature of the macaque results was the development of severe pneumonia that extended throughout the lungs, notes Earl Brown, a virologist at the University of Ottawa.
and found that those born before 1918 were more likely to produce antibodies capable of neutralizing the swine flu virus. That protection is somewhat counterintuitive:
the two viruses are not strikingly similar. But it is still possible that the immune response elicited by one virus can offer protection against the other (see Old seasonal flu antibodies target swine flu virus). Oddly,
exposure to similar viruses that circulated from the 1920s to 1950s was not enough to elicit these antibodies a result that doesn't mesh with the lower infection rates among those who are over the age of 60
but were not alive in 1918. One possible explanation is that antibodies that are not able to fully neutralize a virus can
nevertheless offer some protection against infection, Brown says. At present, most swine flu infections are mild, and the severity of the present pandemic does not come close to the 1918 flu,
but experts worry that the new virus could become more virulent over time. Meanwhile, the virulence seen in the animal studies is disquieting,
People infected with the H1n1 swine flu virus who are otherwise healthy should not routinely be given antiviral drugs,
An experimental HIV vaccine has shown moderate success at preventing infection by the virus. A US$119-million study involving more than 16,000 HIV-negative men
Beachy worked on virus resistance in plants, and later collaborated closely with Monsanto, the leading producer of genetically engineered seed, on transgenic crops.
is caused by a morbillivirus a group of viruses that also includes measles. Clinical signs include fever, discharges from the eyes and nose, diarrhoea and dehydration.
a vaccine containing the attenuated virus that was heat-stable and could be stored and transported over long distances.
Oura says that the biggest scientific challenge in eradicating the virus is the large-scale monitoring
and surveillance needed to ensure that the virus is gone. It's a huge task when you have the virus in developing countries and war zones, such as Somalia,
to carry out monitoring and surveillance, he says. By the 1970s, smallpox, too, was found only in the war-torn Horn of Africa,
Because it contains the live virus diagnostic tests can't differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals,
as both will test positive for antibodies against the virus. Cows also pass on antibodies to their offspring through their milk.
whether the virus has been eradicated, vaccinations must stop for a period of two years and calves younger than two years old then need to be tested.
of which governments and laboratories around the world are keeping a stock of the virus for research purposes.
The disease is caused by a virus called a morbillivirus a group that also includes the measles virus. Clinical signs include fever, discharges from the eyes and nose,
when a heat-stable vaccine was developed that contained the attenuated virus, allowing the vaccine to be stored
Oura says that the biggest scientific challenges in eradicating the virus is the large-scale monitoring
and surveillance needed to ensure that the virus is gone. It's a huge task when you have the virus in developing countries and war zones, such as Somalia,
to carry out monitoring and surveillance, he says. Although the vaccine can provide lifelong protection, it has caused also some problems.
Because it contains the live virus diagnostic tests can't differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals,
as both will test positive for antibodies against the virus. Cows also pass on antibodies to their offspring through their milk.
To evaluate whether the virus has been eradicated, vaccinations must stop for a period of two years and calves less than two years old tested.
of which governments and laboratories around the world are keeping a stock of the virus. Â
To assess whether mosquito populations are harbouring dangerous viruses, researchers often use traps baited with carbon dioxide
and subjected to genetic analyses to identify any viruses. But this procedure does not distinguish between viruses that are confined safely to the mosquitoes'gut
and those that have migrated to their salivary glands to be released in saliva when the insects bite a host.
Both methods put people at risk of exposure to the viruses. Andrew van den Hurk of the Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services in Coopers Plains, Australia,
but inactivate viruses, enabling researchers to collect them safely. The team report their new approach in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.
and that more than 70%of cards tested positive for the three viruses. Almost all cards that mosquitoes had fed on tested positive for the viruses they carried.
The team next tested their approach in the field. Their results showed that traps containing honey-soaked cards attracted more mosquitoes than those without cards,
where they were tested for Ross River and Barmah Forest viruses. VIRAL RNA was found on the cards and in the mosquitoes that fed on the cards.
because it detects viruses only when mosquitoes are capable of transmitting them. Viruses in mosquito saliva can be transmitted,
but those in the gut cannot infect a new host when a mosquito bites. But the usefulness of the cards may vary according to the mosquito species and the geographical region
chikungunya and yellow fever viruses, prefers blood meals over honey. The kinds of mosquitoes they trapped with this method are not necessarily the most important vectors for some viruses,
says Scott Weaver, who studies virus-mosquito interactions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
The method does not indicate which species, or how many mosquitoes, deposited viruses on the cards.
As a result, it would be nearly impossible to quantify the risk of infection on the basis of the amount of VIRAL RNA on the cards
It would be more valuable for the quick and dirty detection of viruses, he says.
Once a virus is spotted, he adds, scientists could then use more comprehensive analyses to determine whether the mosquito preys on humans,
The World health organization (WHO) announced on 10 august that the world is no longer experiencing an H1n1 influenza virus pandemic.
and that H1n1 would probably take on the behaviour of a seasonal flu virus. Margaret Chan,
because the virus hadn't mutated into a more lethal form and drug resistance hadn't developed.
Business watch A generation of drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C is set to flood the market.
and drug behemoth Merck, headquartered in Whitehouse Station, New jersey, both released promising results from late-stage clinical trials of their leading drugs against the hepatitis C virus (HCV).
The virus, which infects liver cells and can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer, affects about 3%of the world's population.
which are natural carriers of the virus, with Japanese macaques. The report said the virus had never been passed to humans.
Events Cholera in Haiti The escalating cholera epidemic in Haiti had claimed more than 900 lives and caused close to 15,000 infections by the start of this week, according to the Haitian Ministry of Public health and Population.
but from the scientific community's responses to them much as deaths from virulent flu come not from the virus but from the immune system's violent overreaction.
the molecular decoy somehow impedes the virus from infecting others. The findings are published today in Science1.
says Laurence Tiley, a molecular virologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and lead investigator for the study.
His team is now working on further genetic tweaks that would inhibit the virus in different ways.
says Ilaria Capua, head of virology at the Experimental Animal health Care Institute of Venice in Legnaro, Italy.
So far, the virus has not been able to spread from human to human, but some public health experts worry that eventually it will adapt to do so.
What's more, flu viruses mutate quickly and are famous for evading vaccines. If made commercially available,
which includes genetic sequences that match up with an enzyme that influenza viruses use for replication and packaging.
somehow stopping it from working with the virus. The enzyme could mutate to evade this decoy,
but if it did so it would no longer be able to match up with its binding sites on the virus. So for the virus to escape,
The researchers modified the chickens by injecting a lentivirus carrying the cassette into clusters of cells on top of egg yolks.
The researchers found that the amount of virus present in the infected GM birds was not significantly different from that in non-transgenic controls.
that the hairpin disrupts the packaging of the virus, preventing it from being taken up normally in the next animal.
says Marc Van Ranst, a virologist at the Dutch-speaking Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.
says Karel Schat, a virologist and immunologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New york. Schat is paid a consultant for another company that is also funding research on using transgenes for disease resistance.
Viral response plan Medical virologists from around the world gathered in WASHINGTON DC on 1 3 march to work out the details of a Global Virus Response Network.
Meeting attendees, invited by virologist Robert Gallo of the University of Maryland School of medicine in Baltimore,
health organizations and the public about existing viruses and attract scientists to the field. Wheat killer A research programme tackling a devastating wheat fungus has been granted US$40 million over five years as part of a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington,
Virus sharing In the event of a future flu pandemic, member states of the World health organization (WHO) will send samples of flu virus to laboratories and drug makers around the world,
in return for greater access to any vaccines created. The deal announced by THE WHO on 17 april,
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