Group items tagged

HPV infection is the most common sexually transmitted disease — between 75 percent and 80 percent of females and males in the United States will be infected at some point in their lives. Most will overcome the infection with no ill effects. But in some people, infections lead to cellular changes that cause warts or cancer, including cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers in women and anal cancers in men and women. A growing body of evidence suggests that HPV also causes throat cancers in men and women as a result of oral sex. HPV infections cause about 15,000 cancers in women and 7,000 cancers in men each year. And while cervical cancer rates have plunged over the past four decades because of widespread screening, anal cancer rates in men and women have been increasing. Head and neck cancers have also been increasing, with the share associated with HPV infection increasing rapidly — perhaps because oral sex has increased in popularity.

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

The lecithin study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, is part of a growing appreciation of the role the body’s bacteria play in health and disease. With heart disease, investigators have long focused on the role of diet and heart disease, but expanding the scrutiny to bacteria adds a new dimension.

“Heart disease perhaps involves microbes in our gut,”

If the report is confirmed, the child born in Mississippi would be only the second well-documented case of a cure in the world

Typically a newborn with an infected mother would be given one or two drugs as a prophylactic measure. But Dr. Gay said that based on her experience, she almost immediately used a three-drug regimen aimed at treatment, not prophylaxis, not even waiting for the test results confirming infection.

Virus levels rapidly declined with treatment and were undetectable by the time the baby was a month old. That remained the case until the baby was 18 months old, after which the mother stopped coming to the hospital and stopped giving the drugs.

“It does not protect as promoted. It’s all a sales job: it’s all public relations.”

“I say, ‘Use this vaccine,’ ” he said. “The safety profile is actually quite good. But we have oversold it. Use it — but just know it’s not going to work nearly as well as everyone says.”

“Does it work as well as the measles vaccine? No, and it’s not likely to. But the vaccine works,” Dr. Joseph Bresee, chief of epidemiology and prevention in the C.D.C.’s influenza division, said. And research is advancing to improve the effectiveness of the vaccine.

“All the collaborative mechanisms and things that make a team a team, rather than four individuals working separately, were damaged by the exposure to rudeness.”

After such a comment, the teams performed significantly worse in the simulated patient emergencies. Their diagnostic skills deteriorated, and so did their technical procedural abilities, from ventilating and resuscitating the artificial babies properly to ordering and giving the right medications. Both doctors and nurses tended to perform worse individually. They also worked less effectively as teams, as far as communicating and helping one another take care of the sick “patient.”

Cholera has killed more than 8,300 Haitians and sickened more than 650,000 in the earthquake-ravaged country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, since it first reappeared in October 2010.

Forensic studies, including one ordered by the United Nations, have identified the culprit bacteria as an Asian strain imported to Haiti by Nepalese members of the United Nations peacekeeping force, known as the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, which was first authorized in 2004 and maintains about 8,700 soldiers and police officers there, drawn from more than three dozen member states. The forensic studies have also linked the spread of the cholera to a flawed sanitation system at the Nepalese peacekeeper base, which contaminated a tributary that feeds Haiti’s largest river, used by Haitians for drinking and bathing.

Still, he added, taking them doesn’t seem harmful. “It’s a relatively low-cost treatment worth trying if you have a condition like Crohn’s disease,” he said. “But for most conditions, the potential benefit is uncertain.”

There is growing evidence for the role of the appendix in restoring a healthful balance of microbes in the body.

The challenge in taking probiotics is to get the microbes past the stomach, where most are killed by gastric acid, said Robert Dunn, a biologist at North Carolina State University. Once in the intestines, they must compete effectively with the microbes already present.

The infection was caused by a fungus, a type of yeast called Candida albicans

It is normally found in the vagina, living in balance with bacteria and other microbes. But illness or some medications can disrupt the balance, allowing for a problematic overgrowth of the yeasts.

The surgeons said that since yeasts normally inhabit the genital tract, they could have come from either the donor or the recipient.

researchers found that children between the ages of 1 and 3 who were given the DTaP vaccine in their thigh instead of in their upper arm were around half as likely to have a local reaction

Some viruses, like influenza, are coated in lipids, “envelopes” that alcohol can rupture.

A new study finds that such transplants cured 15 of 16 people who had recurring infections with Clostridium difficile bacteria, whereas antibiotics cured only 3 of 13 and 4 of 13 patients in two comparison groups.

The final piece in solving the puzzle of DNA was achieved on the morning of Feb. 28, 60 years ago this week, when Dr. Watson saw how the bases of DNA paired up.

Another paradox of city life: it seems it is healthier to inhale the subway’s air than the shower’s mist.

the deluge of bacteria that hit your face and flow deep into your lungs in the morning shower

Running the water for 30 seconds before stepping in would mean fewer bacteria in one’s face