USA Today is reporting a large outbreak of a Norovirus on the Celebrity Cruise ship Mercury. 419 passengers became ill out of 1800 passengers (23%). The symptoms for the norovirus are vomiting and diarrhea for 1-2 days. Disinfecting an area that has been contaminated with norovirus has been notoriously hard to do. In one study, [...]
Katie Couric had a nice segment on the over use of antibiotics on the news last night. Basically it stated that we are giving animals antibiotics in order to grow them at high densities, higher profits (=low quality of life). People who work with these animals and who consume them are seeing higher levels of [...]
In class we have been discussing antibiotic resistance. From the CDC their fast facts on antibiotic resistance: Antibiotic resistance has been called one of the world’s most pressing public health problems. The number of bacteria resistant to antibiotics has increased in the last decade. Many bacterial infections are becoming resistant to the most commonly prescribed [...]
Magic bullet for all viruses? Not quite. A paper published in PNAS details how a consortium of researchers have discovered a compound that appears to target and inactivate enveloped viruses. Not naked viruses, just enveloped viruses. But the amazing aspect of this compound is it that it appears to inhibit the infectivity of ALL enveloped viruses. All [...]