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When infected with the bacteria Wolbachia, mosquitoes are unable to spread viruses such as dengue

by introducing an insecticide resistance gene alongside the Wolbachia bacteria into the mosquito, that the insects pass on the disease-blocking bacteria to other mosquitoes faster

Our results show that Wolbachia-based strategies could hold the key to a cheap and sustainable approach to disease control

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,”

The strategy worked so well, Dr. Hopkins said, that Sierra Leone was smallpox-free in less than two years.

When programs are well run, he said, progress can be rapid; Ghana went from 501 cases to none in 18 months.

enhanced levels of proinflammatory proteins in the blood of patients with acute coronary events and detectable levels of the EBV-related protein

having more of one of these proteins in the blood was linked to the presence of antibodies that signal a latent Epstein-Barr virus

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.

Hazen’s group also found that blood levels of TMAO and L-carnitine could predict heart disease risk, which they learned by collecting blood samples from 2,595 patients and tracking their health for three years.

Molecules proposed as biomarkers for heart disease often look promising in initial studies but fizzle out clinically. “We’ve been down this road so many times before.”

antibodies against a protein in the saliva of a pathogen's transmitting agent

has been shown to confer immunity when administered protectively as a vaccine.

Lyme bacterium known as

The researchers generated and transplanted a type of human nerve-cell progenitor called the medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) cell, in experiments describe

The researchers generated and transplanted a type of human nerve-cell progenitor called the medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) cel

Kriegstein sees MGE cells as a potential treatment to better control nerve circuits that become overactive in certain neurological disorders.

Scientists believe that disruption of two key particles—and consequently a proteasome's ability to work correctly—has implications for cancers as well as various neurological degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.

"In the assembly process there is only one tail that actually determines how the core particle and regulatory particle bind together," Roelofs said. "That's surprising because there are six tails, but only one is needed to give specificity, and the docking into the pocket is controlled by the chaperone."

the findings may reveal new targets for anticancer drugs

Seagrass meadows, among the most endangered ecosystems on Earth, play an outsize role in the health of the oceans.

The plants also fight disease, it turns out. A team of scientists reported on Thursday that seagrasses can purge pathogens from the ocean that threaten humans and coral reefs alike.

But the meadows are vanishing at a rate of a football field every 30 minutes.

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.

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.