Texas is at risk of a deadly measles outbreak, and yet few have been willing to cast blame on the state’s burgeoning—and notoriously combative—anti-vaccine movement. Enter Peter Hotez, an affable, bow-tie-wearing scientist who decided he’d had enough. One afternoon in October 2016, Peter Hotez holed up in his office at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, [...]
Abstract The paper investigates the effects on building indoor air quality (IAQ) resulting from the choice of different design ventilation rates. A reference residential building was analysed by means of the multizone modelling software CONTAM, by monitoring the concentration of two pollutants: occupant-generated carbon dioxide (CO2) and total volatile organic compounds (TVOC) from indoor sources. [...]
Abstract Objectives Environmental exposure to chemicals has been considered a potential factor contributing to deteriorated semen quality. However, previous literature on exposure to air pollution and semen quality is inconsistent. We therefore investigated the health effects of short-term and long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) on semen quality in Taiwanese men from the general population. [...]
In The Lancet Infectious Disease, Pierre-Stéphane Gsell and colleagues1 present safety and efficacy data on the deployment of the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine during an outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Guinea, 2016. On March 17, 2016, almost 3 months after Guinea was first declared Ebola virus disease-free, two new cases of Ebola virus disease were confirmed.2 Fortunately, members of [...]
Influenza results in annual epidemics and global pandemics of acute respiratory illness that increases morbidity, mortality, and hospital admissions. Fortunately, there are currently two classes of antivirals licensed for the treatment of influenza in much of the world: the M2 inhibitiors (amantadine and rimantadine) and the neuraminidase inhibitors (oseltamivir, peramivir and zanamivir). There are also [...]
Abstract In addition to improved water supply and sanitation, the two-dose killed oral cholera vaccine (OCV) is an important tool for the prevention and control of cholera. We aimed to document the immunogenicity and protection (efficacy and effectiveness) conferred by a single OCV dose against cholera. The meta-analysis showed an estimated 73% and 77% of [...]
Abstract To detect changes in human-to-human transmission of influenza A(H7N9) virus, we analyzed characteristics of 40 clusters of case-patients during 5 epidemics in China in 2013–2017. Similarities in number and size of clusters and proportion of clusters with probable human-to-human transmission across all epidemics suggest no change in human-to-human transmission risk. Since December 2016, the [...]
Research published today in the New England Journal of Medicine describes how raw flour, an unlikely suspect, caused an Escherichia coli outbreak in 2016. Because of its low-moisture properties, flour was not thought to be a conduit of E coli bacteria, but a multistate team of investigators discovered that flour processed in one facility was linked to the outbreak. From December [...]
A team of international researchers recently found the more poor-quality air people breathe, the more damage they’re making to their bones. According to them, no matter the levels of pollution there are in the environment where a person lives, they will slowly makethe mass in their bones decrease and lead it to suffer from fractures and other diseases,like osteoporosis. The analysis from two independent studies showed that the [...]
About 50 employees of Essentia Health, an upper-Midwest hospital chain, didn’t go to work Wednesday. But it wasn’t an early start to the Thanksgiving holiday for them. They were fired for refusing to get flu shots. It’s part of a growing trend for hospitals to require flu shots for workers. Public health experts say it [...]
