News by Subject Medicine & Health

The more that families understand the end-of-life treatment preferences expressed by adolescents living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the less likely these youth are to suffer HIV-related symptoms compared with youths whose families do not understand their end-of-life care goals, according to a single-blinded, randomized study published online Oct. 19, 2018, in Pediatrics.

In the ongoing chemical battles among bacteria and their microbial neighbors, a new toxin has been uncovered. This unfamiliar toxin behaves in a familiar way. Its actions against other bacteria resemble the mechanisms of cholera, pertussis and diphtheria toxins. Some bacteria deploying this toxin have safeguards against self-poisoning.

In Central America, Chagas disease, or American trypanosomiasis, is spread by the 'kissing bug' Triatoma dimidiata. By collecting DNA from the guts of these bugs, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have described patterns in the behavior of the bugs, the strain of parasite, and the communities of microbes that interact with the parasite.

A surge in Lassa fever cases in Nigeria in 2018 doesn't appear to be linked to a single virus strain or increased human-to-human transmission, according to genomic analysis published in NEJM. Multiple institutions collaborated on the report, and the research was supported in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Human Genome Research Institute, and the NIH Common Fund's Human Heredity and Health in Africa Program, all components of NIH.

Amid a plan announced by the United Nations to eradicate tuberculosis by 2030, a new study has revealed the emergence of multidrug-resistant strains of the disease which go undetected by WHO-endorsed tests. These findings, from an international research team co-directed by CNRS researcher Philip Supply are published in the Oct. 17, 2018 edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases.